Bmr-r-r: i|!:::;!ii!i! !i!ii:;M' ! hl'i ' ' 'I liliiiilj III" I ! !i!i.: Ui tiiirimrfrrrrriiiirnrinr.ir! Cornell University Library F 215.S72 Call of the new South 3 1924 026 471 262 OfnrttcU Itttoeraitg Hthrarg Strata, Wem ^atk OL,(XX\ei\jLr) Uou-na Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026471262 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH 60V. BEN W. HOOPER PRESIDE\T THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGIGAL CONGRESS NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE MAY 7 to 10, 1912 EDITED BY JAMES E. McCULLOCH NASHVILLE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS 1912 b Copyrighted 1912 BY SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS -Vfr-rr A'45-5'77'f PRESS OF BRANDAU-CRAIG-DICKERSON COMPANY NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 1912 CONTENTS Page. Portrait of Gov. Ben W. Hooper, President of the Congress. Portrait of Mrs. E. W. Cole, Founder of the Congress. Introductory Note 7 Social Program 9 I. Preparatory. The Call of Gov. Hooper 13 The Challenge of the Congress 15 The President's Telegram 17 Address of Welcome, Ira Landrith, D.D., LL.D 18 Southern Problems That Challenge Our Thought — G. W. Dyer, Ph.D 25 II. Child Welfare. The Child and the Court — Bernard Flexner 37 The Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children — Mrs. Cora Bristol Nelson, A.B 40 The Prevention of Juvenile Dependency — J. T. Mas- tin, D.D 44 The Relative Value of the Institutional and Placing-Out Systems — Hastings H. Hart, LL.D 51 Infant Mortality — Miss Gertrude B. Knipp 59 The Mountain Whites of the South— G. H. Detwiler, D.D.. 62 Child Labor and Compulsory Education — Owen R. Love- joy, A.M 67 III. Courts and Prisons. The Purpose of Imprisonment — ^G. W. Dyer, Ph.D 87 Prison Conditions in the South — Mr. Tom Finty, Jr 92 The Jails of Alabama— W. H. Oates, B.S., M.D 104 Municipal and Misdemeanor Offenders — Philip Weltner.... 106 The Indeterminate Sentence and the Probation System — Prof. C. S. Potts, M.A., LL.B II3 The Object of Imprisonment — Rev. F. Emory Lyon, Ps.D.. 122 Fundamental Inequalities of Administration of Laws — Hon. William H. Samford 124 The Prisoner's Side— Louis J. Bernhardt 129 An Observation — Graham Taylor, D.D., LL.D I3S IV. Public Health. Diseases of the Social Organism— 'W. S. Rankin, M.D 141 Sociological Importance of Vital Statistics— Ennion G. Williams, M.D 148 6 CONTENTS Mental Defectives and the Insane — William Francis Drewry, M.D 153 The Care of the Degenerate — Alexander Johnson 168 The Sociological Aspect of the Tuberculosis Problem — Chas. L. Minor, M.D 172 Insurance Nursing — Lee K. Frankel 187 National Deterioration by Neglect of Public Health — J. L. Ludlow, C.E., M.S 191 V. Negro Problems. The Negro and Crime — Judge William Holcombe Thomas. . 203 The Negro and Public Health — Oscar Dowling, M.D 212 My Experience in Organizing Negro Anti-Tuberculosis Leagues — Surgeon C. P. Wertenbaker 216 The Negro and the New South — W. D. Weatherford, Ph.D. 220 VI. Enemies of the Home. The Divorce Problem — Chas. A. Ellwood, Ph.D 229 The Money Shark Business — W. Woods White 240 VII. Education and Cooperation. Education and Social Service — Henry F. Cope, A.M., D.D.. 249 Camp Fire Girls of America — Luther H. Gulick, M.D 259 Coordination and Cooperation— John M. Glenn, M.A., LL.B. 267 VIII. The Church and Social Service. The Church and Social Service— Samuel Zane Batten, A.M., D.D 275 The Church and Modern Industry— Charles S. Macfar- land, Ph.D., D.D 292 IX. The Call and Qualifications of the Social Worker. The Potential Resources of the South for Leadership in Social Service— Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph.D 311 The Call of the Social Worker— Edward T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D '322 Qualifications of the Social Worker— Graham Taylor D.D., LL.D ;. 340 X. Organization. Constitution and By-Laws 351; Officers and Committees 358 Membership List ,5, Bibliography ,-- Index of Speakers, Writers and Officers 378 Index of Subjects ,§, INTRODUCTORY NOTE On February 6, 1912, Governor Ben W. Hooper, of Ten- nessee, issued his call for the Southern Sociological Con- gress, and requested the Governors of the other fifteen Southern States to co-operate with him in its development. An Executive Committee of social workers in Nashville was appointed to work out the plans of the organization and take charge of the enterprise. The object of the committee was to bring together the representative people from the entire South interested in social welfare for the purpose of studying and improving the social, civic and economic conditions of the South. The Congress met from May 7 to 10, 1912, with about seven hundred delegates in attendance, representing twenty- eight States, the District of Columbia, Canada and Africa. With the exception of a few minor changes, the program was carried out as published. While the Executive Com- mittee was pleased with the large and representative at- tendance of delegates and with the prompt and efficient services of the staff of speakers, it was especially gratified with the intense moral earnestness of both speakers and delegates. The work in hand for human welfare was too important and sacred to permit of religious cant or frivolous jest. Every word breathed a spirit of prayer and social justice. The Congress was characterized by a degree of harmony and enthusiasm that are found only in large gatherings of per- sons who are conscious of rendering an urgent, unselfish and enduring service to humanity. It is also this element of enthusiasm for social health and justice that gives this book its chief value. Necessarily, a great deal of material placed in the hands of the Publishing Committee could not be used in this vol- ume. The committee felt that this first volume especially should be used as much as possible for general circulation. 8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE Consequently, it seemed wise to omit the minutes and the impromptu addresses, many of which, both in the general sessions and the sectional conferences, were very valuable. Even with the more carefully prepared written addresses the Editor has condensed and abridged many paragraphs in order to prevent repetition and otherwise to render the book most suitable for popular use. For obvious reasons the committee decided to publish the list of members by States, and not to give the local ad- dresses. The bibliography has been prepared from lists recom- mended by a number of speakers at the Congress. Unfortunately, illness prevented Governor Hooper, the President of the Congress, from being present. His photo- graph on the frontispiece will be an introduction to the members. The only other photograph appearing in this book is that of Mrs. E. W. Cole, who generously became the founder of the Congress by providing funds sufficient to place it upon a solid financial basis and to enable the Executive Commit- tee to maintain an office throughout the year as a clearing- house for the study of social, civic and economic questions. The two names that the Congress will ever delight to honor are those of Governor Hooper, who inaugurated the Con- gress and became its first President, and that of Mrs. E. W. Cole, who, by her benefaction, guarantees the permanency and efficiency of the Congress and becomes its founder. Nashville, Tenn., June 1, 1912. The Editor. SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE CONGRESS The Southern Sociological Congress stands: For the abolition of the convict lease and contract systems, and for the adoption of modern principles of prison reform. For the extension and improvement of juvenile courts and juvenile reformatories. For the proper care and treatment of defectives, the blind, the deaf, the insane, the epileptic and the feeble-minded. For the recognition of the relation of alcoholism to disease, to crime, to pauperism and to vice, and for the adoption of appropriate preventative measures. For the adoption of uniform laws of the highest standards concerning marriage and divorce. For the adoption of the uniform law^ on vital statistics. For the abolition of child labor by the enactment of the uniform child labor lavs^. For the enactment of school attendance law^s, that the reproach of the greatest degree of illiteracy may be removed from our section. For the suppression of prostitution. For the solving of the race question in a spirit of helpfulness to the negro, and of equal justice to both races. For the closest cooperation betvi^een the church and all social agencies for the securing of these results. I. PREPARATORY The Call The Challenge of the Southern Sociological Congress The President's Telegram Address of Welcome Southern Problems That Challenge Our Thought THE CALL The call of Governor Ben W. Hooper, of Tennessee, issued to the Governors of sixteen Southern States, Feb- ruary 6, 1912, inaugurating the Southern Sociological Con- gress : "In the month of December, 1911, I received a letter from the Commissioner of Charities and Corrections in a Southern State suggesting that I call a Southern conference for the study and discussion of social problems, and that said conference meet in Nashville on account of its con- venience to the entire South. "Since then I have taken this matter up with people interested in various phases of the general subject, both in and out of Tennessee, and have found such a unanimity of favorable sentiment that I feel justified in issuing this call. "The social workers of Nashville have perfected the organization of Executive and Advisory Committees, with a view to making necessary preparations for the proposed conference, and have formally added their request that the call be made. "For thirty-six years annual meetings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction have been held, the benefits of which have largely gone to the Northern States, for the reason that these conferences have usually been held in the North, have been attended principally by Northern people, and have been devoted to the discussion of questions from a Northern viewpoint. "For a long period subsequent to the Civil War the South was engaged in a struggle to recover from the shock of war and regain her feet. When this period of recovery had passed the South entered upon the present wonderful era of material development, the zenith of which will not be reached for many years. Neither this condition of poverty and depression nor the sweeping material advancement now in progress have been conducive to the maintenance of the 14 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH South's high ideals of government and society. Neverthe- less, every State in the South has been bravely grappling vi^ith her sociological problems, which are admittedly more difficult than those in other sections of the Nation. "While the South's financial, industrial and agricultural development is now being emphasized by her great leaders in those lines in the Southern Commercial Congress, ques- tions of humanity must not be forgotten if our development is to be symmetrical. "In view of the foregoing considerations, I am calling the 'Southern Sociological Congress,' for the study of social, civic and economic problems, to be composed of delegates from the sixteen Southern States, to meet in Nashville, Tenn., May 7-10, 1912. "The Governor of each Southern State is requested to appoint not less than one hundred delegates and is cor- dially invited to attend in person. "The following institutions and organizations are also requested to send one or more delegates : "Penal Institutions, State and County. "Reformatories and Juvenile Courts. "Child-Helping Institutions, such as Orphanages, Day Nurseries and Child-Helping Societies. "Asylums for the Insane, Feeble-Minded, Deaf and Dumb, Blind, Poor and Aged. "Hospitals and Schools for Nurses. "Medical Associations, State and County. "Boards of Health, State and Local. "Anti-Tuberculosis Leagues and other Health Organiza- tions. "Vice Commissions. "Housing Organizations. "Park Commissions. "Labor Organizations. "Public Libraries. "Colleges and Universities. "Bar Associations, State and County. "Women's Clubs, State and Local. CHALLENGE OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS 15 "Fraternal Orders and other Societies, Lodges and Asso- ciations which engage in Benevolent Work. "Temperance Organizations. "Social Settlements and Institutional Churches. "Newspapers and Magazines. "The committee in charge of the preliminary arranee- ments are laying their plans deep and broad for a great gathering of Southern thinkers, whose deliberations will produce far-reaching results in the betterment of humanity by the adoption of improved methods for effectuating the purposes of organized society. "In order that the committee in charge may get in touch with prospective delegates as speedily as possible, it is re- spectfully urged that each official and organization author- ized to name delegates will send the list to Mr. J. E. Mc- Culloch, Secretary, Nashville, Tenn., at an early date. Said delegates will then be furnished with full information rela- tive to the proposed Congress. "Very truly yours, "Ben W. Hooper." THE CHALLENGE OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS.* Fifty years ago the South was a nation within a nation. War left her stunned and prostrate. With marvelous swift- ness she regained her feet and started on the present march of progress. Her material development in recent years has been wonderful. Her educational recovery is a thrilling story of heroic endeavor. Through early adversity and later prosperity her passionate loyalty to her best ideals proves that she is still a nation within a nation. But her attitude today is different. Before the war she was self- centered ; now she is nationalized. Then she was loyal only to herself; now she is intensely loyal both to herself and *The challenge was issued six weeks before the Congress met. 16 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH to the nation. This explains why the Southern Sociological Congress is a necessity. There is also a splendid new patriotism in the South. It is rooted in the undying love of men who fought for their native land. No people on earth are more devoted to their nation than Southerners are to the South. She is in reality the home land to them. Every foot of her soil is made sacred by the blood of her heroes — the fathers of the present generation. The South is no adopted country to her citizens. She is their very mother. They are blood of her blood and spirit of her spirit; and they love her with a devotion that only real children can feel for their mother. This intense loyalty of Southerners to the South has been enlarged into national patriotism. This patriotism of the New South is the most wonderful fact in American history — a miracle of national recuperation. Southern chivalry is not dead. It is only working in new conditions with new forces. It is a pervading passion for righteousness, a vicarious love of humanity, an unselfish enthusiasm to spend itself in helping to develop the nation on the solid foundation of social justice, health and purity. Knowing the spirit of the New South as we do, we are confident that the Southern Sociological Congress will be nothing less than a bugle call to arms. "The Solid South for a Better Nation," will be our slogan, and thousands of men and women will enter a crusade of social and civic betterment. The volunteers will make a fraternity of nation-builders who will not be satisfied to stop with the limits of the South. They will render a national — a world- wide service. The Southern Sociological Congress is, therefore, a chal- lenge to the men and women of the whole South : First, it is a challenge to the Southern fathers and mothers and all social workers, to lift the burdens of labor from childhood and to make education universal. Second, it is a challenge to the men who make and ad- minister laws to organize society as a school for the develop- ment of all her citizens rather than simply be a master to THE PRESIDENT'S TELEGRAM 17 dispose of the dependent, defective and delinquent popula- tion with the least expense to the State. Third, it is a challenge to all citizens to rally to the leaders of social reforms so as to secure for the South civic righteousness, temperance and health. Fourth, it is a challenge to Southern chivalry to see that justice is guaranteed to all citizens regardless of race, color or religion, and especially to befriend q,nd defend the friend- less and helpless. Fifth, it is a challenge to the Church to prove her right to social mastery by a universal and unselfish social min- istry. Sixth, it is a challenge to the present generation to show its gratitude for the heritage bequeathed to it through the toil and blood of centuries by devoting itself more earn- estly to the task of making the nation a universal brother- hood. Seventh, it is a challenge to strong young men and women to volunteer for a crusade of social service and to be enlisted not as conscript soldiers, but as eager regulars for heroic warfare against all destroyers of public health and purity and to champion all that makes for an ideal national life. Ben W. Hooper, President. John H. DeWitt, Chairman Ex. Com. J. E. McCULLOCH, General Secretary. THE PRESIDENT'S TELEGRAM.* Mooresburg, Tenn., May 6, 1912. Col. Geo. C. Taylor, Secretary to the Governor, Nashville, Tenn. Please convey to the Southern Sociological Congress my * Governor Hooper, the President of the Congress, was ill at the time the convention met. His telegram was read to the Congress at the open- ing session by Dr. Ira Landrith. 18 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH profound regret and disappointment on account of my in- ability to attend its meetings. I hope that this initial Con- gress will be followed annually by the assembling of the South's strongest and best men and women to study and discuss those great moral problems of organized society which are even more important than the enlargement of our commerce and the development of our material re- sources. With the slogan of "The Solid South for a Better Nation," this Congress can lead the march which has for its goal the universal education of the children, the more per- fect care of the neglected and unfortunate, the removal of the spirit of vengeance from our penal codes, and the con- duct of our corrective and charitable institutions in accord- ance with the most enlightened modern methods, free from graft, politics and inhumanity. In behalf of the State of Tennessee, I extend to each delegate to this Congress most cordial greetings. Ben W. Hooper. ADDRESS OF WELCOME. IRA LANDRITH, D.D., LL.D., REPRESENTING GOVERNOR BEN W. HOOPER. Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen of the First Southern Sociological Congress: I share very liberally your deep disappointment that Governor Hooper could not have the privilege of opening this significant and monu- mental Congress. It is altogether probable, too, that no event of his administration has made him more unhappy than did the fiat of his physician barring Governor Hooper from attendance upon this meeting to whose membership and success he gave unstinted labor and all of the influence of his individual and official approval. The exact truth appears to be that the dauntless and too industrious young chief executive of Tennessee has been temporarily forced to take a vacation from his own very practical and effective ADDRESS OF WELCOME 19 sociological activities — his labors for improving the moral, educational and hygienic conditions of the people of the State in general and the "brother in bonds" in particular. I need not add, what everyone of his fellow-citizens already knows, that no delegate here will be more keenly interested in the sayings and doings of this Congress than will be Governor Hooper, whose is, after all, only a bodily absence. Grateful as I am for the high honor which his appoint- ment to utter this word of welcome bestows, I perhaps ought to absolve the Governor from any other blame than attaches to the act of naming his unworthy substitute. The speech itself has had the benefit of neither gubernatorial coaching nor chief executive editing. But you are welcome to Tennessee and to our Capital City. To prove it, we are willing to hear and heed your message without first advertising our own virtues. You have heard already of our vices ; for, spoiling the poetry of an old truth without destroying its verity, The evils that cities do are heralded everywhere; The good is often interred with their local politics. You will soon discover that Nashville and Tennessee afford a field for your benevolent activities. We can only hope that, with our institutions of learning and our multi- farious and multiplying agencies for preventing and de- stroying the foes, and for creating and encouraging the friends of humanity, we may also furnish you an accept- able force with which to aid in cultivating the field. It seems fitting that this Congress should be held at this time and in this city, just after we have had here the South- ern Commercial Congress, exploiting the financial renas- cence and resources of the South, and following the Fif- teenth Conference of Southern Education, which has made such generous contributions to the mighty revival of popu- lar education which our section is enjoying. Commerce, education, social service — these three, but the greatest of these is the Southern Sociological Congress. Nor is such comparison odious, since prosperity in the once impov- erished South may well give us Faith ; and education, Hope ; while surely the sole inspiration of this Congress is Love. 20 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Father Ryan wrote before his prophecy had become his- tory, else he would have changed his present to the past tense, "Forth from dust and ashes, Forth from humiliation and defeat, The South" hath risen up. Our neighbors, even, being allowed to judge, we have arisen also in matters of mind culture, for the other day the New York Times was willing to say editorially of us : "In no part of the country have so much prevision, so much painstaking study, and so much careful cooperation been devoted to the work of public education in all its branches. . . . We have in the South more highly de- veloped than anywhere else a practical and fruitful system of industrial education. And industrial education by no means, in this case, is confined to schools or to the pupils of schools. It includes a wonderful system of experimental farming, guided and supervised by the best experts, but largely carried on by farmers themselves, and a like system is being gradually extended to other forms of industry." Neither we nor our neighbors will be extravagant enough to claim similar excellence for those weightier matters of the law for which this Congress stands. Our worst enemy could not say that we had not done much toward solving our own peculiar social problems, but our most partisan friend would not insist that what we have done is adequate, or that our sociological progress has been equal to our material advance. Tell us, therefore, the truth about ourselves, re- membering the while that we want curative remedies and effective surgery, as well as brave and accurate diagnosis. We recognize all of you as friends, and most of you as fellow-sufferers from all the ills of the South ; hence what- ever you may say in criticism will be kindly. The South's one most acute and delicate problem has sometimes suffered from ill-advised long-range philanthropy; but even the negro problem, so far as it is a real problem, will be soonest solved by a solid nation working for a better South, and not alone by a solid South striving for a better nation. In this, ADDRESS OF WELCOME 21 as in all other righteous endeavors, the right-minded South- erner will welcome the counsel and the liberality of North- ern philanthropy ; for, be it said with utmost good will and good humor, when the South receives Northern beneficence for her eleemosynary institutions she is only having driven back to her farms the horses, mules and cattle that were more or less benevolently borrowed for the Federal Mars half a century ago; receiving, too, the return of this bor- rowed property in a much wiser and more helpful form than by Congressional appropriation or grudging Federal aid. Happily the time has come in the providence of the God of peace and brotherhood when the white patriot on the ground can — and he must — join the white patriot at the North in studying, and in doing, what is best to be done for the physical, moral and intellectual well-being of the black man of the South. And no past prejudices, however they may have been produced, and no ancient resentments, no matter how justly caused, must be permitted now to dis- courage or disturb the Southern white man in the dis- charge of his duty to help to good citizenship his less fav- ored Afro-American neighbor. We have professed to un- derstand this problem. Let us now withhold nothing that will tend to its solution. But this Congress must busy itself about more than one race and about many more than one subject. The task it has set for itself is too tremendous, too comprehensively Christ-like, for either sectionalism or its twin iniquity, sectarianism. In the language of another, "A pilgrim to the Celestial City may belong to a small sect of congenial fellow pilgrims, who provide him pleasantly with all the religious stimulus he seems to require for hia journey heavenward, but the Christian who is trying to transform the City of Destruction into the City of God requires the cooperation of every fellow Christian. He has too vast a task on his hands to inquire closely into his brother's doc- trinal orthodoxy, or his view of the mode of administering some sacrament, or the validity of his ecclesiastical order." Neither sectional nor sectarian pharisaism is more admira- ble than is the contemptible individual variety. 22 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Tell us the truth, that the Solid South has small remain- ing apology for her solidarity unless she is thus united for the weal of the nation. Remind us that, because we are still more largely rural than is either the North or the East, we must address ourselves faithfully to the double task of improving country life, country schools and country churches, the while that we catch up with our urban growth in our study of the new questions of mushroom munici- palities. You will deal with fundamentals in this Congress, unless your program fails to mirror your purpose. You will stand for whatever promotes the growth of homes and children and character; and you will antagonize everything that menaces men and women, and health and morals. You will echo the sentiment of one of the leaders of her sex who declared the other day, "The future lies in ladies' laps," and you will announce that nothing is tolerable that dis- courages or weakens the glory of motherhood or denies to childhood a fair chance. If we were as much interested as we ought to be about adult morality, we would need to give less concern to infant mortality. If we gave more ounces of energy and wisdom to housing, we would save many pounds now wasted on carousing. When we have learned our easy lessons of prevention, we shall require smaller appropria- tions for tuberculosis hospitals. After we have discovered that more people die from the effect of our improvidence than by the hand of divine Providence, we shall not only revise our creeds, but our conduct. Then the man on the avenue will go down in both person and purse to see how his cook and laundress live in the alley, and how his chauf- feur exists in the hall bed-room or in the tenement. We shall richly deserve the return of our post-bellum poverty if we now allow our cupidity or our new-rich pride to soothe us into snug complacency over the factory slaugh- ter of the innocents, the machine murder of children, ani the industrial enslavement of wage-earning womanhood. The biggest man, potentially, is the boy, mayhap the baby boy, and child-welfare is true philanthropy's divinest com- mission. ADDRESS OF WELCOME 23 Tell US then, as we believe you will do, how, by compul- sory education, by medical inspection in schools, by right- eous legislation against child labor and over-crowding, by crusades against preventable sin and poverty and disease, we may imitate Him who took little children in his arms and blessed them. We are beginning to realize that we have spent to much time protecting infant industries and too little protecting infants ; too much energy clamoring for free trade between nations and too little prohibiting free trade in bad milk and bad morals. Help us to the creation of a social conscience that is so sensitively aware of its duty as its brother's keeper that it will not, except in life and death crises, wound the atmosphere with siren whistles, or poison it with unnecessary din, dirt and smoke. Teach us that it is a beautiful charity to care for the degenerates, the idiots and the insane, that, like orphaned babyhood, will always hold up impotent hands for the aid of the more fortunate ; but impress us with the sterner truth that intel- ligent courage and love must also attack the causes of de- generacy, idiocy and insanity. When we face like men the duties growing out of the brotherhood of man we will make short shrift of the iniquities that weaken and cripple and kill men and their offspring. We are hoping to learn in this Congress that the mar- riage tie should be the tie that binds and not the tie that breaks in the first, or the second, or the last breeze of adver- sity; and that children have the right not only to be born, but to live, in homes that the law never desecrates by division; that parents, oftener than their degenerate chil- dren, deserve the penalties which the law inflicts upon juve- nile crime ; that, though it may be right to send some crimi- nals to prison even for life, it is not right to send any of them there for death by disease, nor to send children to prison at all amidst the moral contagions of adult brutality ; that the name of the landlord ought to become as notorious and as despicable in the community as is the character of the building he leases to the rum-seller, the gambler and the dealer in humanity's holiest heritage, woman's honor, whose partner in shame he is ; that a non-political board of health, 24 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH a non-partisan police force, an independent school board and a statesmanlike city council are as necessary and as natural as is a fire department that turns the hose on the burning property of Democrats and Republicans alike. Because we believe that you have come among us to say these things and many more that ought to be said, we wel- come you to Nashville and Tennessee. Because we love our Southland, and because we know you share that love, we are glad you came. And we are sure that your coming means that you agree that the South's manifest virtues should not be permitted to blind us to the South's removable vices. The South has less apology than any other section for not illus- trating in its civic and social life the morality of the Sermon on the Mount and the integrity of the Ten Commandments ; for while we have one or two problems to the manner born, we have escaped until now many of the sorest trials of the North and East and West. With our return to prosperity, with the discovery that the cotton mill must seek the cotton gin and not the cotton gin the cotton mill, and with the great wealth which tomorrow will float up to us through the Panama Canal, we shall find ourselves confronting ten social and civic difficulties for every single commercial one which this assured material opulence will create. This Congress, then, was not called a moment too soon, and it has no minute to lose; and the people of the South have no time and no energy to waste in shouting shibboleths and in plead- ing in the living present, that men shall act and vote as their fathers shot in the dead past, all honor to the honest shoot- ers, no matter what the direction of their aim! The sun- kissed soil that was once prolific of patriots, ought not now to be wasted in sprouting demagogues. Neither should partisanship, erstwhile a fair synonym for principle, be prostituted to the base uses of those who would silence the testimony of brotherly love, and hush the protest of those who resent the political domination of any portion of the South by conscienceless greed. Ours is, then, a task for united righteousness, and let us never forget that it is a task far beyond the longest reach of sect, sectionalism or seism. SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT 25 SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT. G. W. DYER, PhD,, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN VANDEEBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN. This is the first meeting of the kind ever held in this country, or in the world, as far as I know. Men and women moved by benevolent impulses have met on various occasions to discuss similar problems affecting the dependent and de- linquent classes in society, but this is the first time that a Governor of a State, in cooperation with other Governors, has called together men and women from a great group of States for the purpose of discussing the problems of the dependent, delinquent and defective classes in society. The problems which we have been called here to discuss are those serious problems which have come to us as the result of a change from rural to city conditions of life. The city is the most serious problem that the world has to solve today, and it is a new problem, comparatively. It came with the industrial revolution, and the industrial revolution was brought about chiefly by the application of steam to machinery and transportation. The industrial revolution was felt first in this country in the second quarter of the last century. It struck the centers of population in the East first, but soon spread to the South, and to the West. Contrary to the opinion of the historians the industrial development of the South is not an example of belated in- dustrial development, but of arrested development. The in- dustrial life of the South before the Civil War, with the exception of the institution of slavery, was very similar to that of other rural sections of this country. The first line of railroad laid in America was laid in a Southern State, and in 1860 the South had more miles of railroad in pro- portion to its free population than the North and West had at that time. Manufacturing in the Southern States had a capital of ninety millions of dollars in 1850, and in 1860 this had increased to one hundred and sixty millions. The 26 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH banking facilities of the South in 1860 compared favorably with those of other sections of this country. The South, in 1860, had built thirty-two cities with populations of eight thousand and over, with a combined population of nearly one million. In no other section of this country was indus- trial progress greater from 1850 to 1860 than in the South. But the Civil War came on and not only retarded this development, but destroyed its very foundation ; it destroyed the property of the South; it destroyed the foundation of the industrial organization; but greater than these, it de- stroyed the great bulk of the strong and vigorous young men of the South. The remnant of the Confederate Army returned to their homes in 1865, having left the flower of Southern manhood buried on the field of battle. They found their property gone; their school system gone; their industrial organizations gone, and they were without money and without credit. A less heroic people would have given up in despair, but the Anglo-Saxon never concedes defeat, and hence is never defeated. With faith in themselves and faith in God, with their eyes to the future, they went to work and within a very brief period they had laid again the foundation of a great indus- trial life, and within a few years the change from rural to city life began, and has continued with great rapidity, until today we find in the South the great trend of social life, of industrial life, of pohtical life, or religious life and of educational life moving in from the country to the city. More and more the whole life of our section is being domi- nated by the city. In 1870 there were only sixty-three towns in all the South that had a population of three thousand and over; in 1900 this number had increased to two hundred and sixty- three. Practically all the problems we are here to study have either come with the city or have been greatly aggra- vated by the city. The city was an unforeseen problem to our fathers, and hence there is little in their teachings of a practical nature that can be of value to us today. 'Wlien we were rural people we made a great success of government, but democracy in the large cities of America has thus far SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT 27 proved a failure. The large American cities are the worst governed cities in the civilized world. In the country we had no serious problem of crime, but in the city the problem of crime is becoming more serious each year. In the County of Davidson, the county in which Nashville is situated, with a population of something over one hundred thousand, there were as many murders in a year as there were in London, with more than four millions of people. In the country we had no problem of pauperism, but in the city we have a great and increasing army of de- pendents to feed and clothe and care for, and the problem has become most serious. In the country we had no prob- lem of child labor, but it is one of the serious problems of city life. In the country there was no problem of divorce, but in the city, or under the influence of the city, this is becoming perhaps the most serious problem of our civiliza- tion. In the country we had no problem of capital and labor, but under the influence of city conditions this, we know, is one of the most serious problems that confronts us today. These and many other similar problems have come to us because we have thus far failed to provide in the city a wholesome environment for all the people, if for any of the people. The city as we have it today is a menace to the home, a menace to wholesome industrial life, a menace to the State, a menace to the schools and a menace to the churches. None of the great institutions of civilization have thus far coped with the problem of the city successfully. The city is domi- nated by the spirit of sordid commercialism, and the slogan that really expresses this spirit would be similar to one given by a hop-picking company in the West. In advertis- ing for men and women and boys and girls to come to its place of business, it placed in the newspapers the follow- ing advertisement: "Wanted — 1,000 hop-pickers, good wages, perfect accommodations, good food at city prices, free whiskey, dance five nights in the week, evangelist on Sunday, and a hell of a time." As a result of these con- ditions we have most serious problems before us and three lines of activity demand our efforts. 28 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH First, is the rescue work; the reforming and rebuild- ing of the unfortunate victims. As yet little has been done in any effective way in this field. We have done little more than throw bread to the paupers and lock up in jails and prisons the criminals. Our jails are often breeding places of vice and crime ; our charity organizations are ineffective, and our prisons in many instances manufacture criminals rather than reform them. The second field of activity is the work of prevention, of transferring those on the border of dependency and crime into a more favorable environment. We have made a start in this work in our houses of correction, juvenile courts and reformatories, but the work has just begun. The third field of activity that appeals to us is by far the most important. It is that of making a diagnosis of the causes of vice and crime and pauperism with a view of curing these evils by destroying the cause. The science of medicine did but comparatively little with the scourges of cholera and yellow fever as long as their efforts were confined to the treatment of individuals affected by these diseases. It was not till they had traced these diseases back to their causes and destroyed the causes that society was relieved from the fearful cost in death and suffering of these great scourges. Sociology properly understood is not a system of rules for curing those affected with social disease ; it is primarily a science of social life, and has primarily to do with the springs of social life — with the causes of social life and the causes of social disease. By far the most effective social work is that which deals with causes. In our work of rescue and reform, even in our work of transferring the affected to a new environment, we will find little opposition from any source. All the good people will help us. If we will make it a fad, the society women will come to our assist- ance. The holders of predatory wealth will make liberal donations, and the political grafters and the unscrupulous politicians are always anxious to make donations for charity. These act as opiates to put the public asleep that they may continue their detestable work unmolested. SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT 29 But when we begin to wage a vigorous war on the prime cause of social disease we will meet all kinds of opposition, and hear howls from the most respectable and most con- servative, and we will be accused of all kinds of crimes and misdemeanors. We will be accused of being fanatics, crooks, knockers, destroyers of business, and general enemies to the community, but this is the work that counts and is the only work that is really effective. Now, there is really no conflict between sound ethics and sound industrial progress. Whatever is ethically bad is industrially bad, and whatever is ethically sound is in the interest of industrial progress. There may be a serious con- flict between ethics and the economic interests of certain individuals, and certain corporations and certain kinds of business which thrive on the vicarious sacrifice of boys and girls, of men and women of the community. While there is always a certain amount of hardship on certain individuals in the transition from one social condition to another, which is incidental to progress, and which cannot be prevented, yet no institution, or custom, or business can legitimately defend its right to live which has as its chief product, or even as a necessary by-product, the destruction of char- acter, the destruction of human life, the destruction of boys, girls, men and women. If our factories cannot run success- fully without the sacrifice of thousands of our bright-eyed boys and golden-haired girls, then our factories must close, for society cannot afford to have the furnaces of its fac- tories fired with costly mahogany and its tramways ballasted with diamonds and pearls. If our cities cannot increase their population without fostering and protecting red-light districts, where thousands of girls are laid on the altar of man's beastly lust, then let them stop growing, and even go back if need be. If our cities cannot be up-to-date and cosmopolitan without maintaining dens of vice and institu- tions of debauchery and crime, wherein thousands of our young men are wrecked and ruined, then we won't be up-to- date and cosmopolitan, we will be behind the times if need be. If we cannot have municipal home rule without having in our oflSces of trust grafters and corruptionists, and out- 30 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH laws in conspiracy with criminals, then we won't have municipal home rule, we will try something else; for it is far better for our cities to enter life maimed and halt and blind and be true to right ideals, than to have two hands and two feet and two eyes in this generation only to be cast into a social hell in the next. Fellow-workers in the cause of civic righteousness in the South, we have a big problem on our hands, and we should seek all the light and help from every source possible. Great as the problem is, it is not too great for us to cope with it successfully. Inspired by the faith that whatever ought to be can be, insurmountable barriers will crumble before us. Speaking not simply as an enthusiastic Southerner to a sym- pathetic Southern audience, but as a student of history and sociology, I make bold to say that no other people in all the world have a better opportunity to solve successfully the serious problems of life in the city and thus make a lasting contribution to Christian civilization than we have. Rich in moral resources, with plenty of space to move and work without being crowded ; situated in a land noted . for its beauty, with a climate unsurpassed, we have all the material conditions essential to the highest possible civilization. Then we have here a great population, a population that is capable of the greatest things for civilization. The typi- cal Southerner is an Anglo-Saxon. In the South we have the purest Anglo-Saxon blood anywhere found in the world today, and we know that the Anglo-Saxon has a genius for government and has never failed to grapple successfully with any serious problems of civilization. The typical Southerner is an American. He feels that his people have lived in America from pre-historic times. He knows no land but this; he knows no clime but this; he knows no flag but that which waves over American soil, and he can sing from the very depths of his soul, "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing, I love thy rocks and rills. Thy woods and templed hills, My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above." SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT 31 The typical Southerner believes in democracy; he be- lieves in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and he will never submit to be driven by a boss or bow in submission to the grafty politician. The typical Southerner is rich in sentiment, and it is only the fool that discounts sentiment as a factor of great- ness in a people. In nothing has England shown her wis- dom more than in giving the largest place to sentiment in the life of her people ; and as a result, in the great crises of this great country she has never appealed to this sentiment in vain. The typical Southerner believes in God and believes in the Bible. Over all strife, turmoil and conflicts of this life, he believes that God lives and reigns, and is ready at all times to strengthen and guide those who put their trust in Him, and that in the end He will make the right victor over the wrong. The typical Southerner was reared in the country under rural conditions, and too much can hardly be said of this as an element of real strength. The typical Southerner loves his home. The typical home of the South as described to us by historians and novelists is always a great mansion on a big plantation. The mansion and the big plantation have been stressed out of all proportion to their real merit as furnishing the strong men of the South. While you are here you may visit the Hermitage, and you will be told as you look upon this artistic and commodious structure that this was the home of An- drew Jackson. A greater mistake could hardly be made. If you would see the home that gave Andrew Jackson to the South, to this country, to the world, you must turn away from the Hermitage to the simple log cabin. This was the home of Andrew Jackson. The great mansions of the South were often the homes of men late in life, who had been made great in the home of the cabin. If you ask me to give to you the typical home of the South, a home that has made the South, I would point you to a simple log cabin of three rooms or four, situated on a knoll among the big trees. The walls were whitewashed. 32 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the floors were scoured and kept scrupulously clean. Just outside the door on a shelf was the water pail, and near the water pail hung the old-fashioned country gourd, which would add 50 per cent to the refreshing quality of any drink- ing water. The lawn was covered with grass and the rose and the lilac and the violets grew there. Just below the house in a grove of green trees was a cool, sparkling spring, where typhoid and diphtheria germs were afraid to go, and just below the spring was the old-fashioned spring house where milk and butter and cream and watermelons were kept cool; and here and yonder over the little farm were apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees and grape vines. In the summer months the family lived under the big trees in the yard for the most part, where they often peeled peaches and ate watermelons. In the cold winter nights they gathered around a big cheerful log fire, the mother sat in one corner with her knitting, the father sat in the other reading his weekly paper or studying his almanac, the little girls were playing dolls and the boys were pulling the cat's tail. When time came to retire they committed their souls to God and then sank away in a sea of feathers, and lingering for awhile in the rich glow of the firelight, they listened to the songs of the wind in the big trees in the yard and the music of the winter sleet beating against the window panes, and then they fell asleep to dream of the happy days that were gone, and the still happier days that awaited them in this home in the future. I think sometimes that it must have been a home like this fhat John Howard Payne had in mind when he wrote "Home, Sweet Home." Certainly it was not until he had known and loved and visited a Southern girl, "Way down South in Dixie," that he sat down in a foreign land, home- less and friendless, and penned those matchless words, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." And surely no people in all the world can sing "Home, Sweet Home," with so much melody and so much meaning as those who came out from this simple home of the South. It is from homes like this that the great army of boys and girls who are coming into our cities today have come. SOUTHERN PROBLEMS THAT CHALLENGE OUR THOUGHT 33 Surely they are too precious for a single one of them to be sacrificed on the altar of sordid commercialism, or on the altar of man's beastly lust. It is in their behalf that we are waging this fight, and in such a cause surely we may say that : "In raptures we'll ride the stormiest gales, For God's hand is on the helm and His breath is in the sails." II. CHILD WELFARE The Child and the Court The Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children The Prevention of Juvenile Dependency The Relative Value of Institutional and Placing-Out Systems Infant Mortality The Mountain Whites of the South Child Labor and Compulsory Education THE CHILD AND THE COURT.* BERNARD FLEXNER, LOUISVILLE, KY. I propose in the time allowed me to consider briefly cer- tain essentials in the administration of the Juvenile Court. I shall assume that there is no longer any question that the court is an indispensable institution in the handling of delinquent and neglected children; and that the movement for its establishment, v^hich began in Chicago and has spread rapidly over a large part of the country, is to be carried forvsrard through the entire South. We have learned something of the methods necessary in the court, about which there was much doubt in its early history. We, who are eager to see the movement grow in the South, ought to profit by the experience of ten years in wrestling with the problem. I approach the subject primarily from the point of view of the lawyer, a point of view that I regard as important. Its importance lies in the fact that in disposing of the cases of the army of children that find their way into court, we are dealing with grave questions, of human liberty, of the sacred relation of parents and child, of questions that affect not only the integrity of the home, but also the foundation of the State as well. I am, therefore, opposed to the view that advocates laymen as judges of the court. On the con- trary, I hold that he upon whom this responsibility falls should be not a social worker untrained in and unmind- ful of legal principles intended to secure the individual in the enjoyment of certain inalienable rights, but rather a judge or lawyer with social ideals and an awakened social conscience, to whom the legal phase of the subject, impor- tant as it is, must still appear as one phase only. There is no longer any need to spend much time in considering the nature of the proceeding. The admitted function of the court has disposed of all controversy on this point. We are establishing these courts to end forever the making of adult criminals out of children; to save *Read by title. 38 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH these children to the State by aid and sane counsel instead of turning them against the State by methods as obsolete as they are cruel and inhuman. I would, therefore, cut out of Juvenile Court laws every taint of the criminal law, every suggestion that the child is to be regarded as a criminal. There is no room for compromise, nor is there any need for it. One by one as they have been called on to do so, courts of last resort have expressed in no uncertain terms this view. With this in mind, we must make ade- quate provision for the court. We have been too much given to tacking it on to a judge already overworked or one temperamentally unsuited, or one engaged in work that makes the court in many instances a prey to party politics. We may expect to meet this situation more or less as long as children's cases are brought either into police courts, before whom come the saloon-keeper, the confirmed drunk- ard, the street walker, each with political pull; or into a court whose time is largely taken up with questions of contested elections or of taxation. Unfortunately, the affairs of the children weigh "light" as compared to these, with the result that we are doing perfunctorily and inefficiently work of the first order of importance in the life of the community. For years it was thought inadvisable to permit an ap- peal from a judgment of the Juvenile Court. In practice, however, it is doubtful if such a position is defensible upon grounds consistent with the welfare of the child. It may be admitted that the delay attendant upon unnecessary appeals is open to serious objection. There is more objec- tion, however, to the arbitrary action of a judge not subject to review. The right of appeal is not only in the interest of the child and the parent ; it makes for greater care, more sympathetic consideration of the case on the part of the judge. It should be permitted in all cases in which the cus- tody of the child is disturbed. In those courts where an appeal is allowed, the number taken is negligible, but not- withstanding this, the value of the right is very great as an assurance against arbitrary and whimsical action on the part of the judge. THE CHILD AND THE COURT 39 Important as all this is, it is of far less value than the proper administration of the court otherwise, so as to make it a living social force in the community. We have had a great deal to say about probation and the other methods of the court that go to distinguish it as a social institution. It may fairly be doubted, however, except in a few instances, if the claims we have made have much basis in actual achievement. Much of the work with children in the court and out of it under the care of probation officers has been casual, haphazard, unscientific, inefficient. The cause is not far to seek. We have been contented to have our probation officers selected not with reference to peculiar fitness for the work, but because the office has been the pawn of con- tending political parties. Political or personal favoritism has filled our probation offices with ward politicians as a reward for political service, or broken down teachers, or business failures, whose only claim rests upon some past favor done the appointing power. There is no time here to go into the details necessary in probation that would make it something more than a mere definition. These details have been worked out in a number of courts as the result of bitter experience, and are readily obtainable. There is time, however, to protest against the prevailing method of appointing probation officers and to insist that, instead, they shall be selected because of peculiar qualifications for the work; selected not by a judge unchecked in his preroga- tive, but rather from an eligible list by a competent body after an examination into the fitness of the particular applicants. With a competent probation service we may expect to tie up the court with every phase of social and educational work in the community and thereby secure a closely knit cooperable group, all working toward the same end. To attempt to work out the appalling problem alone without bringing into play the Church, the school, the public library, the social center, the relief agencies, in fact, the manifold social activities of the community, is to invite fail- ure in advance. The point I have sought to emphasize above all others is the need for more painstaking methods than we have 40 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH followed thus far. We have taken, as I see it, a most un- critical attitude toward the whole movement. We have been concerned too much with bringing an army of children Into court and too little concerned with providing the proper means of caring for them after they leave the court. The great value of the court and of the whole movement, after all, consists not in the realization of a new and saner method of handling the child under the law, but rather in the fact that through it there has been driven home to us the thought that children can be kept out of court by means wholly within our grasp. This, then, is the goal we have set ourselves to reach. THE CARE AND TRAINING OF FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN. MRS. CORA BRISTOL NELSON, A.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BRISTOL- NELSON SCHOOL, MURFREESBORO. TENN. To undertake to exhaust a subject as vital as the care and training of the feeble-minded in five short minutes is impossible, but I hope to arouse some interest, at least, in this sadly neglected class. Please bear in mind at the outset that the discussion is on the feeble-minded, a class that readily responds to training, and not on the hopeless idiot. As education spreads in the masses, it also descends lower in the strata formerly devoted to ignorance and infer- iority. It has been scarcely seventy-five years since the first systematic eflFort was put forth to develop the sub- normal child, first in France by the great Dr. Seguin, physi- cian and teacher, who gave his life's best efforts to the training of children with retarded mentality. His efforts were soon followed by others in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, and in a short time in the New World. In 1848 the Legislature of Massachusetts issued a CARE AND TRAINING OF FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN 41 grant of $2,500 to establish an experimental school for the training of the feeble-minded. This was the first in the United States. From this the work has steadily grown. Dr. Seguin came to this country in 1850, and added his experience and influence to the movement. It has been the error of the ages that the feeble-minded are absolutely void of mental powers; that their brain is lacking. Such is not the case. Feeble-mindedness is not the result of deficiency or malformation of the brain or nervous system, nor in general is it accompanied by any serious deformity of the body. These ideas, though very generally accepted, have no foundation in fact. Feeble- mindedness is simply an arrest of mental development. What we desire to discuss today is the best method of illuminating these darkened intellects. Our sympathies go out to the blind child, whose vision of the world has been forever cut off; but here we have the child, who seeing, yet sees not ; the child with the dark- ened intellect, whose windows have never been opened to the beauties in nature, or to see and discriminate between forms and colors. Our heart aches for the deaf and dumb child, but here we have the little ears closed to all God's music, often fail- ing to heed the voices of loved ones, and dumb so far as his ability to convey thought or interest in his affairs to his playmates. We grieve over the little cripple, who must walk through life on a crutch, or spend his days in a misshapen body, but here we have the little limbs stiffened and cramped by the lack of co-ordination of mind and muscle. "God help the imbecile, more dark their lot than dumb or deaf, the cripple or the blind, the closed vision their's, their page of life a blot." This is the class we are neglecting in the South today. The State has loosed its purse strings and opened wide its doors to the deaf and dumb, blind and insane, but no door has been opened, no purse string loosed, no helping hand offered to these little ones, who must go through life babes, although full grown. 42 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Dr. F. M. Powell, in his report to the National Bureau of Charities in 1898, states that there were, at that time, twenty-four public institutions in the United States for the care of feeble-minded. This number has somewhat in- creased since then, but outside of Kentucky and Virginia nothing has been done in the South for feeble-minded chil- dren except a small private school at Murfreesboro, Ten- nessee, of which I have the privilege of being Superin- tendent.* In the statistics of 1910 we find in the Southern States the appalling number of 68,040 feeble-minded persons, and 7,282 in the 'State of Tennessee alone. Is it not worth while for us to do something for this great body of unfortunates? You ask: "What can be done ? Will it be worth while to start this new drain on the State, when the demands are already so great?" I can assure you we could never make a more economic invest- ment. Think of the relief to the mother to know that her afflicted child, whom she does not, cannot understand, is being gently and kindly trained in useful occupations, and instead of a care, the child becomes a useful companion. Think of the relief to society to have that great throng of more than 68,000 feeble-minded persons cared for, edu- cated and trained, many of them to earn their own living, all to be benefited, and at least protected from a life of vice and shame, which so often befalls them. We do not expect or propose to create or supply faculties absolutely want- ing, nor to bring all grades of the feeble-minded to the same standard of development and discipline; nor to make them all capable of sustaining creditably all the relations of a social and moral life; but rather to give to dormant faculties the greatest possible development and to direct these awkward faculties into channels of usefulness con- trolled by an aroused and disciplined will. Although most of them may never be capable of competing on equal terms with their normal fellows nor of managing themselves or their affairs with ordinary prudence, yet many of them *Since the reading of this paper it has been learned that $60,000 has been appropriated in North Carolina for a State Institution for the Feeble- Minded. CARE AND TRAINING OF FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN 43 may be brought to normal mindedness, all to happier and more useful lives. Habits of honesty and truthfulness, courtesy and usefulness, neatness and order — cheerful obe- dience and patient industry may be instilled, and instead of helpless burdens on the home or State, we shall have useful and companionable boys and girls prepared to fill their little niche in life, proving a pleasure to their care- takers rather than a burden. Every State represented today in this great Sociological Congress should in the near future organize some serious and systematic eifort for the development of their feeble- minded. I say it is a blot on the fair name of the chivalrous South to let this class of unfortunates be harbored in our poor-houses and insane asylums, and often, because they are misunderstood, incarcerated in our jails with hardened criminals. The great Christ said: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my little ones, ye have done it unto me." I know His great heart throbs with gratitude over every little hand trained to usefulness, every eye trained to see the beauties of this world, every ear trained to hear its sounds and voices, every tongue trained to express the thoughts of an awakened brain, every life that is made fuller, happier and more useful. My friends, I wish I had the power to arouse in you the zeal that I feel for this work. I wish I could make you see the great need of public institutions for the care and training of these afflicted ones. I wish I could bring before you letters received almost daily by me from heart-broken mothers all over the South, begging me to do something to brighten the otherwise hopelessly darkened lives of their little ones. Oh, you men and women! You representative men and women, who have come up from all parts of our Southland to discuss, plan and solve these great social prob- lems, I would that I had the power to say some word that would so burn into your hearts that you would never rest until every State in the South, yea, every State in the 44 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Nation, had thrown open its doors for the care, protection and development of the feeble-minded children. God has called me in a peculiar way to minister to these, "the least of His little ones," and in doing this I find my greatest happiness. "If I can let into some soul a little light, If I some pathway, dark and drear, can render bright, If I, to one in gloom, can show the sunny side. Though no reward I win — I shall be satisfied." THE PREVENTION OF JUVENILE DEPENDENCY. J. T. MASTIN, D.D., GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTIONS, RICHMOND, VA. The most valuable asset of a nation is its children. What the next generation shall do for the uplift of the race will depend upon what the present generation does for the children. The highest calling of men and women is to bring into the world children that measure up to high standards physically and mentally, and so to train them that they will do the best work possible in the time given them to live. The family that is strongest and that will live longest is the family that trains its children most efficiently, and that begins that training long before those children are born. The nation that thus educates its children will rule the world. A principal test of the advance in civilization is the interest of the nation in the weakest of its people. Among the most helpless are dependent children ; therefore, a proof that our Southland has not reached perfection is found in the inadequacy of our laws regulating the labor of women and children, in the lack of compulsory education, in the im- perfection of legislation eontrolling the gathering of vital statistics, in the heaviness of our going on matters touching THE PREVENTION OF JUVENILE DEPENDENCY 45 the procreation of feeble-minded, in the inadequate pre- vention of the great white plague and of the great black plague, and in the fact that we have not yet reached definite conclusions relative to the best method of caring for desti- tute children. One reason why there is such diversity of opinion as to the best method of providing for these little ones lies in the prevalence of the notion that destitution carries with it a presumption of inferiority — that a child who is dependent is for that reason likely not to be as promising as one whose father and mother are living, or who has means to feed, clothe and educate itself; and, therefore, we have not given as much and as earnest thought to the training of this group as to the education of the independent. Herein we are making a great mistake. Some of the brightest and best people who ever lived were poverty-stricken in their youth. Henry M. Stanley was an inmate of an orphan asylum; Lincoln was destitute in boyhood, and Moses was adrift when a baby. There are among our dependent classes today, no doubt, children who, in the next generation, will shake the nation. Moreover, we have approached the problem of the de- pendent child from the wrong direction. We are proposing to solve this problem by dealing with the individual, which is like removing year by year the defective fruit from an orchard in order to eradicate the San Jose scale, not paus- ing to consider that while we gather fruit the disease is spreading. The matter of greatest importance is to seek the cause of disease, to find out and apply the remedy, and thus save the orchard. So, while it is a great and good thing to heed the cry of the children, to take care that not one of them suffers, it is a greater thing to discover, to study and to remove the causes of dependency, so that there may be no more destitution. I would call attention to four principal causes of juvenile dependency : First, non-support. Our studies in Virginia tend to show that 50 per cent of the children coming into the custody of our societies and institutions are destitute because their 46 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH fathers, who are able-bodied, decline to support them. For a long time our law-makers paid but little attention to this curse, which was proof that there was no crystallization of public sentiment with regard to it. The first movement for the prevention of non-support resulted in the enactment of laws which, upon complaint of the wife, sent a man to prison for refusal to provide for his family, thus widening the breach between him and his wife, degrading him and dishonoring the family. These laws said to the offender in effect : "You are at liberty to neglect your family up to the point where the mother is driven into court by the hunger of her children, when, if you still decline to provide for your own, we will place you where it is impossible for you to do so, force you to live in idleness and in evil com- panionship, and furnish you food, lodging and medical attention free of cost." The result in no way relieved the situation, but rather made it worse. Laws are now being enacted which provide for the appointment of probation officers, who take cognizance of and supervise non-support cases, require men guilty of non-support to pay specified amounts weekly to the courts to be used for the support of those dependent upon them; and upon refusal they are put to work until such time as they signify their willing- ness to provide for their families, or they are sentenced to hard labor, and while they are serving time their families are paid a portion of the money they earn. One probation officer in the City of Richmond last year turned over $2,300 to the wives and children of the men who had deserted them. Today he is collecting $500 per month. When by some such methods as these all men who have families are compelled to support them, we will have made a long step toward the prevention of juvenile dependency. Second, the marriage of the unfit and the procreation of defectives. The increase of dependents because of the mul- tiplication of the unfit is a matter to which, up to this time, we, in the South, have given comparatively little thought. Persons unable to support themselves, those who are insane or epileptic or confirmed inebriates, should not be allowed to marry or to become parents. Especially the THE PREVENTION OP JUVENILE DEPENDENCY 47 reproduction of the feeble-minded should be prevented. It is certain that feeble-mindedness is directly inherited. In- vestigators have failed to find a single instance of a normal child both of whose parents were feeble-minded. Studies in New Jersey go to show that where one parent is mentally defective, 50 per cent of the children are abnormal. We in Virgina are now investigating a family where the father is a high grade imbecile and consequently incompetent. This man, his wife, five children and an old grandmother live in one room, in which there is but one bed. One of the children is an idiot, another has been declared insane, none have ever attended school, all are dependent upon the city and will be a burden to the State all their lives. In another case the father was normal and the mother a moron. There were thirteen children and grandchildren ; one of low grade mentality, who died at the age of thirty-three, was able to provide for himself; another, a defective delinquent, has served one term in the penitentiary and has been com- mitted to jail many times; five are low grade imbeciles; two are idiots ; one is hopelessly insane, and one died in infancy. Instances of this kind prove that we will never be rid of dependency among children until we have laws to prevent the procreation of mental defectives and the marriage of the physically unfit. Third, the high rate of industrial accidents is due to de- fects of our industrial system. Specialists declare that over one thousand women are made widows and two thousand children are orphaned annually in this country from acci- dents in the one industry of mining coal and iron. As a rule, children are self-supporting at the age of sixteen. Therefore, while a child, made destitute in infancy because of the death of its father by accident in a mine, is growing to the age when it can support itself, sixteen hundred widows and thirty-two thousand children have been added to the army of sufferers by like accidents. Judge Lindsey, speaking at the White House Conference, said: "On the basis of the report of the Commissioner of Labor, made a number of years ago, it is computed that the industrial accident rate in the factories of New York State reaches 48 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the appalling figure of 44 to 1,000, and that more than 232,000 factory employes are killed or injured every year in the United States. Mining and railway casualties bring the total slaughter, mutilation and other injuries up to more than 524,000 cases annually, a record which makes that of any twelve-month history of any war pale into insig- nificance. This does not include the hundreds, of thousands of toilers who are killed or disabled in occupations noto- riously injurious to health. This nation has never awakened to the heroism of its women, forced as they are by the hundreds of thousands out of their natural sphere as home- makers into the added burden of bread-winner, clinging always and ever to the child, enduring hardships, priva- tions and struggles every day of their lives as great as that endured by any soldiery in the darkest days of a nation's wars. It is only the mother love, the heroic sacrifice of the brave-hearted woman, the noble mother's devotion which has saved us from the flood of helpless and dependent orphan children yielded up by this awful struggle." Now that the marvelous natural resources of the South are beginning to be developed, now that our popualtion is fast changing from rural and agricultural to urban and manufacturing communities, unaccustomed to city life and unskilled in handling machinery, we must safeguard our people, or the maimed, the slain and the dependents result- ing will be appalling. When all able-bodied men come to do their best to pro- vide for their own, and especially those of their own house- holds, when we shall have enacted and learn to enforce laws to prevent the marriage and reproduction of the unfit, when safety appliances are universally used on all dangerous machinery, when the work of safety commissions shall have approached perfection, we shall begin to see the dawn of the day of universal prosperity, and then the poor will cease to be with us always. But it is a far cry to that good time. Meanwhile dependency exists. Children hungry and defenseless gather about our doors. Poverty is a prolific cause of poverty. Pauperism persists in family groups from THE PREVENTION OF JUVENILE DEPENDENCY 49 generation to generation, hence we may reduce juvenile de- pendency in the future by redeeming the destitute children of today. They should be so provided for that neither they themselves, w^hen they reach maturity, nor their descend- ants will be dependents. How can we do this? Seek to know them, to get a record of their lives and of their family histories, file these for future reference, and especially study them in order to become informed as to hereditary evil ten- dencies that should be guarded against. Take them out of evil surroundings ; make them clean and strong in mind and body as far as possible. In order to accomplish this, physi- cal and mental examinations are necessary in every case, not the filling out of blanks by the family physician in consultation with parents or friends, but real thorough examination by experts. If the child is to be made most efficient we must know in order that we may remedy any physical defects which will handicap him in the race for the best, such as correcting defective vision, removing ade- noids and enlarged tonsils which cause deafness and pre- vent normal breathing, guarding against hereditary pro- clivities to tuberculosis and like diseases, and to abnormal appetites. A child who has inherited a tendency to tuber- culosis should be so placed that he can work in the open air and sleep out of doors at night, one who has inherited a tendency to insanity should not be so situated that he will be subjected to any great physical or mental strain. Especially important is the mental test! Much time and money has been wasted in the effort to educate children who are feeble-minded. No amount of mental training will ever cure the malady from which they suffer; they can never be made capable of doing much with books. When, therefore, the tests show that children are mentally de- fective, an effort should be made to train them in some line of manvnl work by which they may become self-sustaining, and steps should be taken to prevent procreation. When children are lifted from want and evil surround- ings, their mothers should be brought with them, if possible. He who was wiser than the wisest of men, when poverty- stricken women brought their children to Him, took the 50 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH little ones and blessed them, and passed them back to their mothers. The strongest inspiration to higher achievement to the child comes through the influence of its mother, and to the mother absolute separation from her children is worse than death. He is not a philanthropist who, except when driven by necessity, puts a child away from its mother's care or breaks the heart of a woman in the effort to save her child. It is not charitable or wise to advise a woman to commit her children to an institution because she is unable to provide for them. There is a much better way: to help her keep her home intact, so that the child may be reared in the family into which it was born. No money yields better returns than that used in the rehabili- tation of families. The old-time orphanage, whose chief problem is to fill its buildings with dependent children and to feed and clothe them at the lowest possible cost, whose claim to recognition lies in its well-kept lawns, its imposing buildings, its polished floors, and in the fact that it teaches the children to read and write and cipher, and to cook and wash and clean by wholesale. Such institutions should be sold, the money invested and the interest used to help dependent, worthy mothers provide for their children, or they should be con- verted into boarding schools in which dependent children could be given thorough technical and academic training, and be allowed to spend vacations at their homes. We have in Virginia a model school of this kind. It has a $1,250,000 endowment. The equipment cost a million dollars. The blacksmith shop is the best in the world. The buildings of the mechanical department are the most imposing on the campus. The man in charge of the machinery is on equal footing with him who teaches Greek. The illegitimate and the poverty-stricken are trained as carefully here as are the well-born and independent at the university, fifteen miles away. The graduates of this school, many of them taken from the cabins in the mountain hollows or from the slums of the city, stand in the forefront of their profession^ or are at the head of many of the great industrial plants of the country. VALUE OF INSTITUTIONAL AND PLACING-OUT SYSTEMS 51 When the alternative lies between placing children in an institution that simply feeds and clothes them, gives them the rudiments of an English education and turns them out industrially inefficient, and placing these children in care- fully selected family homes under constant, wise super- vision, the family home, where, with the help of the foster parents, of the Church and of the public school, they begin at once to learn to overcome the difficulties of the life into which they have been called, is decidedly preferable. This latter method of providing for whole orphans or f or children whose parents are hopelessly immoral, should be extended in the South. If such societies were enabled by State appropriation, or preferably by private philanthropy, to board children in families when suitable homes could not be secured, as is done in Massachusetts, for instance, a great advance in child-helping would be accomplished. THE RELATIVE VALUE OF THE INSTITUTIONAL AND PLACING-OUT SYSTEMS. HASTINGS H. HART, LL.D., DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHILD HELPING OF THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUN- DATIONj NEW YORK CITY. There has been a very remarkable change of public sentiment in recent years on the subject of institutional care of children and the care of children in family homes. There was held in the City of Washington three years ago a con- ference known as the White House Conference, devoted to the discussion of the welfare of dependent and neglected children. For many years there had been a vigorous con- troversy carried on between those who advocated the orphan asylum plan of dealing with children and those who advo- cated the placing-out system. The theater of that discussion through those years was chiefly the National Conference of 52 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Charities and Correction, and for many years it was argued vigorously. When the White House Conference was held in 1909 a committee on resolutions was appointed. A preliminary caucus was held and there appeared to be considerable di- vision of opinion. In that conference there were represented a great variety of interests, State boards of charities. State boards of control, children's aid societies, children's home societies, societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, orphan asylums, children's homes, children's reformatories, and every shade of religious opinion. Catholics, Jews and many different denominations were there represented. To the astonishment of everybody, after a two days' session, that conference adopted unanimously a platform of about 3,000 words, which declared emphatically and unanimously to the following effect : They started with the proposition that home life is the most precious possession of the child ; every child should enjoy the privilege of a family home, either in the home of its own parents, if that home is fit or can be made fit, or else in the family of foster parents. That platform went on to declare that no home should be broken up simply on account of the poverty of the parents. If there be a mother of reasonably good character and effi- ciency some means should be found whereby she should be permitted to bring up her own children rather than to give them to strangers or place them in institutions. Such assistance as was necessary should be given to the ihother to enable her to bring up her own children, and such pro- vision should be made that she could remain and live in her own home and care for her own children, either by assist- ance from private sources or from the public treasury. The White House Conference at the same time recog- nized the propriety and the need of institutional care of certain classes of children under certain circumstances and for certain limited periods. There are some classes of children for whom they recognized the necessity of per- manent institutional care. It is recognized that for the feeble-minded child institutional care is a necessity, and it is rapidly coming to be recognized that every feeble-minded VALUE OF INSTITUTIONAL AND PLACING-OUT SYSTEMS 53 girl should be taken before the age of puberty; that she should be cared for in an institution during the whole of the child-bearing period, as the most practical and effective method of preventing the multiplication of feeble-minded children, who may become delinquents, paupers, prostitutes, or a burden upon the community in some way. This neces- sity is becoming widely recognized, especially in the South at the present time. I understand that it is the intention of the trustees of the new Institution for Feeble-minded in North Carolina to devote tliat institution to the care of girls from twelve years old and upwards, until all of the girls of that age are provided for throughout the whole State. The new law adopted by the Legislature during the past winter in the State of Virginia provides that that institution shall first care for girls during the child-bearing age. It is recognized also that there should be permanent institutional care for a very large proportion of epileptics. There is no class of children more in need of the sympathy of the com- munity than the epileptic child. Any one who has watched such a child, as the disease progresses from year to year, must have his sympathies aroused. Remember that such a child is barred from the ordinary pursuits of life, he can- not become a house painter, or a teamster, or a railroad em- ploye, or be a salesman, or engage in many other pursuits, so that the opportunities of life are very largely taken away from him. It is recognized today that the cripple should be cared for. A considerable portion of the crippled children of the community should receive permanently institutional care — those who are so far disabled that they cannot get a living for themselves. If crippled children are promptly taken and receive the best orthopedic treatment for awhile, then after a convalescent period, which may last three months or three years, a very large proportion of them can be so restored to health as to be able to get a living for them- selves without becoming beggars. There is recognized also the educational institutional treatment necessary for a considerable number of children for a longer or shorter period. We must have institutions 54 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH for the education of a large part of the deaf and blind. In the larger cities they are now establishing public schools which enable them to live at home and have the privileges of the public school. In rural communities and smaller towns it is entirely impracticable to provide good, compe- tent instruction for such children, because they need special teachers, specially trained, at high salaries. It is impossible to provide such teachers for one or two children. Conse- quently, State institutions seem to be a public necessity. Educational institutions for the training of a consid- erable proportion of delinquent children are recognized as a necessity in the community. We have made wonderful progress in the use of the family home for the treatment and care of delinquent children. We have learned that a great many of the children who are brought into the juvenile court can be reclaimed and rescued without the necessity of being sent to an institution. It is simply necessary to provide for their watch^are by efficient and competent pro- bation officers in their own homes, or to transfer them from their own homes to the homes of suitable individuals. Through the operation of this plan a large proportion that were formerly sent to reform schools are no longer sent to such institutions. The result has been to make the work of the juvenile reformatory much more difficult than it formerly was, because children that were formerly sent to the juvenile reformatory in the early stages are now paroled and sent back home. If the child breaks his parole he is sent back to the judge and admonished and again paroled, perhaps once or twice. Then when we have exhausted the influences of the Church, the Sunday school, the family home, the juvenile court and probation system, we turn the child over to the juvenile reformatory superintendent. He is expected to accomplish results and succeed with that child where all the other people have failed. Consequently, it is necessary for us to exercise a most charitable mind in judging the work of our juvenile reformatories. I know the people engaged in that work throughout the United States. They are splendid men and women who are strug- gling with this problem with fidelity and courage. VALUE OF INSTITUTIONAL AND PLACING-OUT SYSTEMS 55 Another phase is rapidly coming to the surface: We all know that a large proportion of the children sent to juvenile reformatories are defective. A considerable num- ber are children of feeble mind. I think any one familiar with such institutions, if he had been asked five or ten years ago to make a guess as to how many of the children in such institutions were feeble-minded, would have stated, probably 10 per cent. Dr. Goddard and Supt. Johnstone, of the State of New Jersey, and Dr. Healey, the physician in charge of the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute of Chi- cago, also the physicians of Rochester, Boston and other cities, have been making psychological studies of children during the past three or four years. In several of the juve- nile reformatories there have been psychological examina- tions made of a large number of the inmates. What is the result? We find that instead of 10 per cent, the number of feeble-minded is probably 25 per cent of all the boys and girls confined in juvenile reformatories. That is an ex- ceedingly significant fact. Through all of the past sixty years, in our juvenile reformatories, we have been strug- gling with this class of children. We have employed expert teachers, who have labored over them, prayed with them, punished them and disciplined them, have tried every meas- ure by education and development to reform those children. Now we recognize that a large number of those children are absolutely inaccessible to the reformatory methods which we customarily employ with the normal child, and the result is we are already establishing institutions for defective delinquents. A bill was before the New York Legislature this year, which will probably pass next year, for estab- lishing an institution for children declared delinquent who are really feeble-minded. Take the class of delinquent girls sent to our industrial schools; 25 or 30 per cent of them need not to be disciplined, prayed over and labored with as delinquents ; what they need is to be cared for and guarded and sheltered as defectives. What is the result of all this? For one thing, it is going to save the superintendents of our juvenile reformatories a large amount of unnecessary lying. I am speaking a fact and the people in this work 56 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH know it. It has been expected that they would reform at least 75 per cent to 80 per cent. And they have been accus- tomed to go over their lists and with what knowledge they had figure out as best they could 75 per cent as perma- nently reformed. And some of these institutions have done it by not keeping track of their children too long. If a child goes out and does pretty well for awhile he is re- formed. As a matter of fact, we have discovered that one- fourth of these children are absolutely incapable of reforma- tion ; that they haven't mind enough to develop a character on which to stand. When that class is eliminated they will be able to furnish statistics, if they are successful in reforming the delinquent child, that will be somewhat nearer true, and they will not have to strain their consciences any more in order to meet the expectations of the community. One result of all this is to raise greatly the standard of the requirements of people for superintendents of reforma- tories. Only a few years ago it was thought that anybody would do — a superannuated clergyman or a retired school teacher, an unsuccessful business man, a good politician in need of a job, or any good woman of devout spirit, was the kind of person to put in charge of such reformatories. But today they are searching the land up and down to find the most competent people at liberal salaries. They are recognizing the problem. I will say to you that there is absolutely no position in any public institution that requires a higher form of capability and fidelity than to be superintendent of an institution for delinquent children. He must have the power of the trained school-master; he must not only be able to control the child, but must possess such character and inspirational qualities as to be able to develop the best in those children; to take hold of a boy with whom nobody else can do anything and to find the way to that boy's mind and heart. He must be a good business man, because he is going to administer a large institution. He must be a man who was brought up on a farm, because he is going to manage a large farm. He must have manual training and vocational training in order to do the work that is given to him. He must have VALUE OP INSTITUTIONAL AND PLACING-OUT SYSTEMS 57 intuitional power to select employes and must have large administrative ability to direct them. He must be a man capable of performing impossibilities. Every superintendent at the head of such an institution today has my most earnest sympathy, and every successful one has my most earnest admiration. The Southland has been slow in taking up this matter of the delinquent child. Tennessee was one of the first, I don't know but the first, Southern States to develop a mod- ern institution. I was in this city nearly twenty years ago and had occasion to admire the work done here at Nashville in the development of your Industrial School, whose super- intendent put it far in the van of the institutions of that class in the United States. But today I have just come from Georgia, where they have a juvenile reformatory. It is an annex to the State penitentiary at Milledgeville. They had a State reformatory in Texas which until very recently was run on a prison basis and had no real reformatory pur- pose in it. They have just awakened to what it means in that State. Here in this State this work has been developed sporadically in different counties and cities. You have a juvenile reformatory here in Nashville and one near Mem- phis, and another at Chattanooga, the Bonnie Oaks. It is only within the past two years that the State of Tennessee, as a commonwealth, has taken hold of this question earnest- ly. Alabama is just opening up an institution for delin- quent girls. Virginia has just gotten one under way. The institutional work in the South is largely undevel- oped. The institution has a legitimate work to do for the dependent child, but it is quite a limited work. The South was the pioneer in the care of the dependent child. The oldest institution in the United States for dependent children is in New Orleans, the Ursuline Sisters'; the second is in Savannah. The first State orphanage in the United States was established in Charleston, South Carolina. Through the years of her poverty after the war the Southland went on with noble courage and devotion and self-sacrifice to de- velop orphanages, through the Churches, the Masons and other organizations of this class; but the South is only 58 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH just now awakening to the fact that it is not necessary to provide institutions for all dependent children. I cannot understand why the South has been so slow to discover that. They are the most hospitable people in the world; people who are glad to open their homes to strangers. They remind me of a good aunt of mine who lived in Minnesota. It was said that she could be seen on the piazza of her house any day watching for strangers and urging them to come in and stay a week. And yet the South has been very slow to develop the plan of placing the child in family homes. They have even said as an excuse for not doing so that the social conditions here were different from what they were in the North. The South, however, is beginning to develop the placing-out method. It is practiced successfully in the State of Virginia. In the State of Florida and in the State of Kentucky they have taken up the placing-out work. In the State of Kentucky and the State of Virginia it is re- markable to notice that this method is also being applied to the colored child. In Kentucky the work of the colored society is under the watch-care and control of the Ken- tucky Children's Home Society. This colored society is re- ceiving colored children and placing them in family homes. The State Board of Charities of Virginia has been made the guardian of delinquent colored children and is placing delin- quent boys in colored homes with great success. Our orphanages throughout the North and also in the South are rapidly becoming boarding houses for the chil- dren of parents in temporary distress. A wife dies and leaves the husband, who is earning a small wage and cannot employ a housekeeper. He puts them in an orphanage and pays one dollar or two dollars a week. A mother is left; she is a school teacher or seamstress or a trained nurse, and she puts her children temporarily in the orphan- age until such time as she is able to establish a home. The orphanages are rapidly becoming temporary resting places for the child until some provision can be made for the child in a family home. I haven't time now to discuss the reasons for this, but it is practically the unanimous opinion among INFANT MORTALITY 59 people who run orphanages in the United States that a suitable family home for the child is ordinarily to be pre- ferred to institutional care. INFANT MORTALITY. MISS GERTRUDE B. KNJPP, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STUDY AND PREVENTION OF INFANT MORTALITY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND. A friend of mine who was coming out of the Hopkins Medical School the other day was stopped by a distressed- looking individual, who held out one of the dispensary cards, and said: "Please, Miss, where does this say I am to go? I can't remember. Is it to the maturity ward or the eternity ward?" The trouble about the babies is that too many of them get into the eternity ward. What we want to do is to bring more of them up to maturity. Take the States represented in this Congress as an instance of what is happening. Owing to the imperfect registration of deaths in many places, it is impossible to tell definitely just how many lives flicker out annually. Though it is not possible to take a group of Southern States and show how many babies have died each year for a term of years, we can do it for a group of the cities which are in the registration area. Take, for instance, Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham, Charleston and Richmond. According to the last Bulletin of the Census (No. 109) the total number of infant deaths in these eight cities during 1910, the last year for which returns are available, was 3,716. Take 3,600 as the annual average, and you have 36,000 as the aproximate number of baby deaths in these same cities in the last ten years. Thirty-six thousand individuals are more than the total population of many a busy, prosperous Southern city — your own Tennessee town of Knoxville, for example, has 60 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH just about that number. And the loss of that many lives by a single catastrophe would wipe out the whole city. Leaving out the cumulative loss, and considering only the number of baby funerals in these eight cities, for one year only — 3,717 — we have a loss that represents more than twice as many lives as went down in the Titanic. There isn't any Congressional investigation when these little lives go out, because the old idea that such deaths were a dis- pensation of Providence is so strongly rooted within us that it is mighty hard to eradicate it. Besides, it is a lot easier to lay the blame on Providence than it is to face the facts frankly and to acknowledge that most of the causes under- lying these infant deaths are man-made and are due either to ignorance or greed. A glance at the chief causes of baby deaths will prove this. Forty-four per cent of the infant deaths in the regis- tratiop area in the United States can be traced to "bad food" and to "bad air" diseases — that is, to digestive and to res- piratory diseases. To be still more explicit, the majority of these deaths are chargeable to ignorance or improper feed- ing, to filthy milk, to infections carried by flies, to dirty streets and unsanitary conditions, to polluted water supply, to overcrowding, and to lack of adequate breathing spaces, fresh air and sunlight. I enumerate these to show why baby welfare work is fundamental to any program of general welfare activities. Dr. Newsholme, the English sanitarian, put in a nutshell when he said : "Infant mortality is the most sensitive index we possess of social welfare." Now, over against Dr. Newsholme's statement put the fact that in the registration area alone one funeral out of every five was that of a baby under a year old, and that over 150,000 babies died last year in that area. Since the registration area represents a little more than half the total population, it is safe to assert that over 250,000 babies under a year old die every year in our own enlightened country. This is a serious commentary, you will agree, on sanitary conditions and on conditions of living. It would all be unutterably sad if the remedy were not INFANT MORTALITY 61 within our own grasp. That is what makes it so tremen- dously hopeful. In an address delivered at the first annual meeting of the American Association for Study and Preven- tion of Infant Mortality, Prof. Irving Fisher, referring to the unnecessary and preventable deaths of babies annually, said : "Out of these deaths at least 125,000 need not have occurred if modern hygiene as it is known today were prac- ticed universally." Infant welfare activities are fundamental to the whole child welfare program. To give the baby a right start you must go back to the mother and give her a chance. Give the potential mother a chance as a child to play; a chance for a normal girlhood, not a stunted one; for outdoor and indoor recreations under right conditions; for home care; for training in the art of home-making. Give the pros- pective mother advisory medical and nursing care ; see that she has adequate food before the baby comes, and has in- telligent obstetrical service. Continue the advisory care through the first year of the baby's life, or longer if neces- sary. Safeguard interests by seeing to it that he is regis- tered as an American citizen within a very short time of his or her arrival. Safeguard them further by demanding clean streets, adequate housing facilities, clean milk and pure drinking water. It is not merely a question of keeping so many more babies alive. It is the question of giving them a chance to live — not merely to exist — and to grow into the sort of citizens, physically, morally and mentally, that are needed throughout the nation. In all the ways I have just mentioned, every one of us, whether we are interested in any particular baby or not, are our wee sisters' and brothers' keepers. It is not only up to society as a whole to prevent the unnecessary waste of infant life ; it is up to every man and every women who has a spark of intelligence to have a share in this crusade for patriotic reasons, if for no other. One of the German investigators has said that formerly it was believed that the "rate of mortality among children who had not reached the first anniversary of their birth was a wise dispensation 62 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH of nature intended to prevent children with a weak con- stitution from becoming too plentiful. Today we know that a great infant mortality is a national disaster, for on the one hand numerous economic values are created without purpose, and on the other the causes of the high rate of infant mortality affect the powers of the resistance of the other infants and weaken the strength of the nation in the next generation." THE MOUNTAIN WHITES OF THE SOUTH. G. H. DETWILER, D.D., PASTOR WEST END METHODIST CHURCH, NASHVILLE, TENN. The people known as the Mountain Whites of the South inhabit that portion of the Appalachian range which ex- tends south of Mason and Dixon's line. The area covered is approximately 50,000 square miles and the population is about 1,500,000. As a class they represent a special type of our citizenship, one well worth careful study and high appreciation. But they are not freaks as the many current and grossly exaggerated descriptions have represented them to be. Descended from an ancestry almost entirely English, Scotch and German, living among practically undisturbed social and industrial conditions for a century and a half, they represent the purest type of Anglo-Saxon citizenship to be found on the American continent, and one capable of the highest possible development. While homogeneous and of a distinct type, they do not live on a dead level of uniformity. Certain class distinc- tions, due largely to environment, must be recognized in a sane sociological study of them as a whole. The typogra- phy of the country reveals three distinct types of physical formation, viz: the fertile valleys, the red clay foot-hills, and the steep wooded mountain slopes; corresponding to these there are three well-marked classes of the people. THE MOUNTAIN WHITES OF THE SOUTH 63 Those who occupy the valleys are well-circumstanced farmers, having free schools continuing from six to eight months each year, private schools of academic grade, good churches and comfortable homes. As communities they are as intelligent, moral and enterprising as can be found i"n any of the most prosperous rural sections of the United States. Those who occupy the foot-hills, where the soil is less fertile, are what are known in our Southland as "one-horse farmers." They usually own the land they till, but the farms are small. The agricultural equipment and methods are not up-to-date. The average income, being relatively small, affords the comfortable necessities of life, but none of its luxuries. Living farther apart than the people in the valleys, the few schools are scattered, necessitating often a walk of two, and sometimes three miles to reach them. The school term is from three to four months each year, and the methods of instruction are not the best. There is very little abject poverty and all have a comfortable subsistence. As a class they are independent, contented, religious and law- abiding. Those who occupy the mountain slopes, where the physi- cal conditions render impossible intimate social intercourse, and where the soil yields a scanty and reluctant return, con- stitute the real poor mountain whites of whom we have heard so much and know so little. With this class poverty and ignorance prevail with their attendant evils. Detailed description is impossible within the narrow limits of this paper. This much may be said, however. First, the picture set forth in current literature is usually drawn by one un- familiar with the real conditions, whose imagination and emotions predominate. Second, having traveled this terri- tory extensively, I am prepared to say that such pictures represent extreme conditions which are to be found in not more than one in ten homes. Third, this class lives almost entirely in the country, where the physical destitution is mitigated by an unlimited supply of pure air, pure water and sunshine. The percentage of each class, I think, may be fairly put 64 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH as 40 per cent of the first class, 50 per cent of the second class, and 10 per cent of the third class. There are no official statistics, and all statements are necessarily based on estimates. The basis of this estimate is a wide and continued observation supported by the opinion of others who have made the question one of special study. The first fact concerning the entire population upon which emphasis should be laid is the one referred to at the outset — they are homogeneous. Purely Anglo-Saxon, with a history and an environment practically undisturbed for a century and a half, they are in a peculiar sense one people. The basal traits of character are uniform. The political, social and religious ideals are the same. The only distinc- tions are those created by wealth and culture. The second fact that is essential to a proper understand- ing of these people is that they are not degenerate. Insofar as all, or any portion of them, fail to measure up to the nor- mal standard of modern civilization, you will find not de- generacy, but arrested development. Of course, there is no such thing as absolute immobility in human society, and in the course of a century an arrested civilization naturally changes somewhat. But so virile is the race dynamic of these people that in summing up results, degeneracy is hard- ly worth counting. Take away the repressive influences and the response is quick and effective. In short, the poor mountain white of the South is the pioneer of the colonial period plus the depressing effect of an inelastic environment of long continuance. The third fact upon which stress should be laid is that the basal cause of whatever destitution or backwardness exists is simple and fundamental. It is one of the funda- mentals that operates in all racial development, namely, isolation. This key unlocks all mysteries and answers all questions concerning these people. It accounts for all dis- tinctive traits, peculiar customs and antiquated ideals. The social standards, the religious beliefs, the political ideals of the most remote communities correspond almost exactly with those of the colonial period. Before the Civil War slavery as an institution never flourished in the mountains. THE MOUNTAIN WHITES OP THE SOUTH 65 Consequently the industrial life of the South swept around this section, leaving it to form its own unique and isolated program. Since the Civil War the political agitation and industrial reconstruction have affected them but slightly and touched them remotely. While the new industrial program has introduced a new agricultural regime and established a new industrial order, which has been followed by a social, political and religious transformation known as the New South, the mountain country has remained static. The waves of progress have been arrested by the mountain bar- riers, and only by slow and painful effort has the new life penetrated its isolation. Within the territory itself the portions first to yield to the new order are those on the out- skirts, while those least affected are the more remote and isolated interior. The so-called "dark corners" are those held in the grip of isolation. The remedy for whatever evils exist, and they are by no means formidable or hopeless, is the invasion of modem industry. The railroad and the factory are the most effi- cient missionaries'. The railroad to open a highway of communication with the outer world ; the factory to develop indigenous resources and socialize the people. This does not mean that these forces are more fundamental or more efficient than religion, but they are necessary to give these more vital forces opportunity and impetus. The facts over- whelmingly sustain this position. The people are intensely religious and, as a whole, are well supplied with churches, but their theology needs revision and their religious life needs socializing. In much of the territory the population is so scattered that the development of the free school sys- tem is slow and difficult, but whenever the isolation is broken and the population can be communized, the response to educational opportunity is ready and the results most encouraging. The intellectual basis is most fertile and un- impaired. Therefore, wherever there is opportunity there is re- sponse. From personal experience the writer does not hes- itate to make the statement that nowhere in our country can there be found a population that can grasp more read- 66 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ily, assimilate more quickly, and hold more firmly the best things in our modem civilization when brought in contact with them. Many educational enterprises of a missionary character among these people have failed because of the isolated condition which surrounds them. The appeal of opportunity did not reach them, and the incentive of oppor- tunty did not inspire them. The schools which have suc- ceeded are, as a rule, located where the grip of isolation has been broken. Another significant fact is that the stu- dents who come to these schools from the more remote and backward communities do not return to their former homes, but seek fields of service in more congenial and remunera- tive surroundings. Still further, the missionary, whatever form his effort may take, whether religious, educational or social, should be indigenous. The misleading and inaccu- rate descriptions of the conditions of these people that have been sent broadcast through periodicals, books and from the platform, have been written and spoken by people who have seen only superficial conditions and have not had either time to know the stable underlying facts nor the sympathetic penetration to appreciate the innate character of the people as a whole. Destitution and degeneracy may be found, but upon the whole do not abound. When found, as found they may be in all parts of our country, they appeal to sensitive hearts and call for self-sacrificing service. But nowhere in the worst cases are the conditions as hopeless and difficult nor the remedy so hard to find as in many other places. Standstill and hesitancy may characterize a large por- tion of the population, but opportunity soon awakens re- sponse, and response is both virile and effective because the fountains of strength have never been wasted. The moun- tain whites of the South are the purest Anglo-Saxon por- tion of our population. Religiously, morally and socially they have preserved in purest form the fundamental ideals of our national life. They afford the best opportunity for the development of a citizenship which will represent the best type of our national life. CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 67 CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION. OWEN R. LOVEJOY, A.M., GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE, NEW YORK CITY. The topic assigned me has a unique relation to this pro- gram, and my duty in speaking upon it the most difficult from the fact that I cannot qualify as a Southerner. Every- one dislikes outside criticism. I need only say that it is neither my desire personally, nor the desire of the commit- tee I represent, to foist any ideals or standards upon any section of the country with which the intelligent and broad- spirited elements in those sections do not desire. Neither can we lay claim to any monopoly of interest in the matter I am to discuss. In fact, the genesis of the National Child Labor Committee is south and not north of Nashville, Tennessee. The committee was born in the soul of a typical Southerner, Edgar Gardner Murphy whose life and ad- dresses and books have sought to interpret to the whole country and the world that all-conquering spirit of loyalty to great causes of devotion to the principles of human lib- erty that have so characterized the Southern man from the dawn of our national history. If anything I shall say has the appearance of presenting outside suggestions for the solution of your local problems I beg to assure you that it is said not in the spirit of one who seeks to boast of achieve- ments elsewhere but rather in the humble spirit of one who comes to acknowledge that as the result of our longer expe- rience in the neglect and abuse of childhood we venture to speak a word of warning to our younger brothers that they may avoid the errors into which we have fallen. If I sup- posed it would require as long for the Southern States to rid themselves of the abuse that the National Child Labor Committee was organized to correct, I should despair of the intellectual and moral integrity of our citizenship. Your commercial and manufacturing industries are younger; your methods for profitably exploiting the child are, aside from the field of agriculture, so newly developed that it is 68 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH impossible you should have learned by experience that which a century of misfortune has taught England and more than a half century has taught our Northern industrial States. I shall have more difficulty in attempting to put my topic in good standing. No other theme on this program need be treated with caution. Let the whole truth be told boldly. If we discuss abuses in our penal institutions no one can object except the corrupt politicians or officials who have abused a public trust. We may discuss child-helping insti- tutions such as orphanages, day nurseries and home-finding societies in the same frank spirit. Agencies for the insane, feeble-minded, poor and other helpless classes may be laid bare with absolute courage. Medical associations, boards of health and anti-tuberculosis activities can strike their hard- est blows with a knowledge that no opposition more serious than that of a belated doctor or antiquated hospital, or tene- ment death-trap, can take oifense. We may discuss our charity organization societies, social settlements, probation systems, war on money sharks, the contagion that knows no color line, the scourge of the white plague, housing condi- tions in mill communities, and the other topics named with- out fear of arousing the opposition of more than a handful of unorganized and ignorant champions of each abuse. There are no positive forces to oppose the most far-reaching constructive program this conference can outline. But when we attempt to discuss the problem of child labor and compulsory education we may as well frankly admit that we know we are playing with fire. No one understands better than the clergyman, the school super- intendent, the college president and the social worker what it costs a man in some parts of the South to boldly an- nounce himself as the champion of child labor reform — not the reform in general, everyone favors that — but I mean the specific steps proposed to put an end to the abuse. It would be difficult for a stranger to these problems to under- stand why the status of the working child in the South is so different from that of the blind child, the homeless child, the orphaned child, or the delinquent child. Why is it that friends of the latter classes hasten to their aid at the first CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 69 cry of distress, while the silent and unintelligent protest of the soul of the factory child and the shuffle of his weary feet at the close of an eleven-hour day appeal in vain for the united strength of social forces that could relieve him in a single year ? BUSINESS INTERESTS ARE INVOLVED. Perhaps we can best realize the status of the working child in Southern industries by trying to imagine what the problem would be if child labor did not pay. Suppose every mill which employs children did so at a distinct financial loss. Suppose the man who pays the child fifty cents for an eleven-hour day in the spinning room must report to his board of directors that it costs the mill $1 a day to keep that child on the working force. I hope I may ask this ques- tion without appearing invidious. I do not mean to suggest that the advocates of child labor in Southern textile mills, mines, sea-food canneries and the like, are consciously ex- ploiting the child with a view to direct profit. But the situa- tion would be unique if the public mind were not influenced by economic considerations. No other social question stands free from these considerations, therefore — why should child labor? In considering prison reform, reform of housing conditions, the fight against tuberculosis and the other topics referred to, we are all conscious, or ought to be, that in promoting these reforms we add to the public wealth; that economic laws are God's laws ; and that while there may be initial expense, the ultimate saving will far more than com- pensate for any immediate sacrifice. In harmony with this general principle, we ought not to be surprised when we find that child labor continues wherever it may legally exist because there is a feeling in the public mind that, despite its objectionable features, child labor is adding to the wealth of the community and to the prosperity of the families involved. Therefore, I have asked this question. For it seems to me if it could be shown that child labor constitutes a finan- cial liability rather than a financial asset, this knowledge 70 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH would help us to a more statesmanlike dealing with the various objections that are always raised against specific attempts to reform child labor. In every legislative campaign we are met by the argu- ment that if child labor ceases the poor widow will suffer, or the dependent father will go hungry, or that child labor laws are ineffective without birth registration, or that chil- dren in cotton mills are immeasurably better off than dying of hookworm on the farms, or that industry is better than idleness, and that if children are taken from the factory they will be thrown upon the streets to become a menace to society, or that child labor cannot be abolished vidthout compulsory education, and compulsory education is impos- sible because of the peculiar racial problems in the Southern States. COMPULSORY SCHOOL ATTENDANCE. Let us take up two or three of these questions and find just where we stand. The problem of compulsory education has already been ably discussed in the papers on the Need of Mountain Children and the Extent of Illiteracy in the South. It is a safe subject. The failure in many Southern States to enact laws which will compel parents to keep their children in school until they have laid the foundations of an American education relates to practically every social problem here. The importance of enacting such laws cannot be overstated. The stock objection one hears everywhere, that compulsory education in the South would be a mistake because it would force the South to educate the negro, is fallacious. Our observation in many mill villages of the South indicate that without compulsory education laws the children of the negro are already being educated, while the children of the whites are being thrust into the cotton mill at the earliest available age there to spend the remainder of their lives in ignorance and many of them in poverty. The recent Government Report on Child Labor shows that the lowest percentage of illiteracy among children under fourteen in mill families was in Georgia, where 42.7 per CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 71 cent were unable to read and write. The percentages run to 65.5 in Alabama and 70.4 in Virginia. If it is the desire of many Southern States, as indicated by certain types of legislation, to maintain white supremacy through the dis- franchisement of the illiterate, one is compelled to ask what the situation will be in many mill communities in another generation when the only man at the polls who can read the names on the ballot is the colored man ? Furthermore, the plea for public sympathy on the ground that racial questions involve the establishment of a double school system, and that the people of our race ought not to bear the burden of the education of the negro is a plea that could be advanced with equal reason in any industrial cen- ter of the North and East where hoards of immigrants are coming in. This army of foreigners did not help create the wealth on which our public school system rests, although they begin to contribute to it as soon as they come, but even before they have added one dollar of value to our national assets, their little children are brought to the school-house door and the State is compelled to provide them education. And while there are many who resent this burden upon our Northern communities, I believe no one who appreciates the significance of education, no one who sees how much more valuable the citizen becomes by reason of a free childhood, and a trained mind, interposes the least objection. On the other hand, vigorous efforts are being put forth in the more advanced communities to provide such school systems as shall prevent these children drifting away from school as soon as the compulsory age period has passed, and will win them to the higher grades. SUPPOSE IT PAID. Whether child labor constitutes a financial liability rather than a financial asset, I shall not argue here. Let us assume that child labor pays; that efforts to raise the age limit and reduce the hours for working children involves a distinct financial loss to our communities. Of course, this assumption requires a violent strain of imagination 72 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH for the entire industrial history of modem times testifies to the contrary. We have not only the record of England, Germany and other European history to prove the economic fallacy of child labor; T;o prove that it injures the financial resources of the families involved, and that the industries themselves suffer as a result of such exploitation; but in addition we have the testimony of employers and successful industries in this country wherever higher standards have been established. I do not forget that a cry has gone up all over New England when efforts have been made to im- prove the child labor laws, that New England industries are being ruined by Southern competition. The false cry of the Southern cotton manufacturer that the National Child Labor Committee is inspired by New England textile capital is no more pitiful than the cry of the New England textile manufacturer that the National Child Labor Committee is devoted to the ruin of their busi- ness by securing advanced laws in New England and leav- ing the situation as it is in the South. Nevertheless there is no scrap of evidence on record that the textile industries have been injured by any legislation for the more humane treatment of little children. The only mills, if there are any such, that have suffered or gone out of business as a result of the enactment of better laws are mills that have been operated in poor buildings, with worn-out machinery, out-of-date methods, and upon a fictitious capitalization. Every mill that has had the hardihood to throw its old machinery on the scrap heap, to employ superintendents who knew their business, and squeeze the water out of its stock, has reason to thank the people of its State for exclud- ing ignorant and inefficient little children from its labor force. Recent stock quotations from a number of New England cotton mills show dividends ranging from 11 to 53 per cent per annum, and if I recall correctly the mill which showed the largest dividends, a New Bedford mill with an average of 53 per cent dividends annually for nine years, is reported more free from child labor than any other mill in the State. Furthermore, we have the testimony of prominent manu- CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSOKY EDUCATION 73 facturers in other industries to the economic fallacy of child labor. The general manager of one of the largest hardware manufacturing concerns in America recently said before a public assembly in Boston that: "Three years ago we eliminated all children from our factory. I confess we did it from a sense of pity, as we felt that these children ought to have an opportunity to play and grow and go to school. At the end of three years, however, our board of directors has determined to continue as a matter of business what we began as a matter of sentiment. We find that a sixteen-year-old child costs a little more, but he does a little more work and does it better ; he breaks less machinery and spoils less material; he requires less supervision, and is two years nearer being an intelligent workman. We be- lieve he is a better business bargain than the little child." Then, turning to other manufacturers, he said. "Without assuming to understand the problem of your business, I venture the opinion that if you will do as we have done you will find by and by that you are having the fun of work- ing on the side of the angels without it costing you any- thing." But let us, for the moment, exclude all this testimony. Let us, I say, assume that child labor pays; that it con- stitutes a financial asset to the corporation which employs it. Our appeal for child labor reform is then stripped of any consideration of self-interest and rests solely upon the social and humanitarian argument. Now, we may speak with great frankness, as we do in other parts of the country. We never fail when in New York to impress it upon the people that there are more little children under sixteen years of age employed in the industries in New York City than in all the cotton mills of the South; and when we are in Pennsylvania we do not fail to remind its citizens that they employ more children under sixteen years in their mines, factories and manufacturing establishments than in all the industries, aside from agriculture in the thirteen Southern States. Yet while we are here together let us admit frankly, or else if we can deny, that many conditions in cotton mills, oyster and shrimp-packing houses, hosiery 74 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH mills and other industries of these Southern States are un- speakable. No one who stands abreast of twentieth civiliza- tion can advance an argument for the employment of a twelve-year-old girl during an eleven-hour day in a cotton mill or any other kind of mill. Yet we have records and photographs of children ten, nine, eight years of age subject to this inhuman treatment. But the evidence does not rest upon the authority of a private organization. The Eeport of the United States Investigating Commis- sion on the Condition of Working Women and Children pre- sents such facts as cannot be set aside nor ignored. The report shows that 20 per cent of all employes in Southern cotton mills are under sixteen years of age. In some mills the percentage ran much higher. One cloth mill in South Carohna had 39.6 per cent of its employes children, and a yarn mill in Mississippi had 42.8 per cent of its entire working force children. But the spirit engendered by this abuse of childhood in otherwise honorable citizens is not less striking. Many mills were found actually trying to hide the facts from Govern- ment agents. Even the low age at which children may be legally employed did not satisfy. In 91.7 per cent of the mills visited in South Carolina children were employed ille- gally. In North Carolina 74.6 per cent of the establish- ments were trampling on this State law, and in one mill in that State 12 per cent of the entire working force was under twelve years of age. In Georgia 64.5 per cent of the mills were violating the law. Conditions' among the oyster shuckers and shrimp pick- ers of the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana show an even more extensive exploitation in proportion to the size of the industry. These children — many of them Polish and Bohemian children shipped from Baltimore at the end of the fruit and vegetable canning season in the North — toil all through the winter shucking oysters or picking shrimp, and then return to spend their summers in the Northern canneries. We have found, photographed and reported many children from ten years of age down to seven em- ployed from three or four o'clock in the morning on busy CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 75 days until four in the afternoon. The work is simple and requires very little intelligence; is deadening in its monot- ony; but the hard, jagged oyster shells which the children handle cannot be said to be comfortable ; and in the shrimp- packing houses the complaint of workers is very common of a fluid in the shrimp that effects the fingers of the work- ers, causing them to swell and bleed. In the evening it is the custom of these pickers, they tell us, to harden their fingers in a solution of alum to be ready for the next day. This report of the effect of shrimp upon the fingers of children was at first denied by the shrimp-packers, but we have heard no denial since the United States Bureau of Chemistry, in its circular issued last September, states re- garding the shrimp, that they "contain some corrosive sub- stance which greatly interferes with their handling and preservation. It attacks the workmen's hands, causing the skin to peel, and also eats through the leather of their shoes. Tins in which the shrimps are preserved are quickly perforated . . . Ordinarily tin containers employed for the preservation of shrimps are rapidly corroded and the lining completely removed." This fluid, on analysis, is found to be an alkali. One of the defenders of this employment of children who was largely responsible for defeating the child labor bill in Florida last year, seeks to satisfy the citizens of his State by contending that no native white children are em- ployed, the assumption being the work does not hurt nor weary a negro child or a Bohemian child. THE POOR WIDOW. It is readily conceded that the exclusion of little children from the mills will, in some instances, visit hardship on the poor widow and the dependent father. But you who have gathered here as the statesmen of the New South are at- tempting to discover solutions, not palliatives; methods of correction, not of excuse. Let us admit, therefore, that if it injures a child to be employed in a factory the question whether the child is three years of age or twelve years 76 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH of age is not pertinent. No one would think of expecting a poor widow to live on the earnings of a three-year-old child, yet many widows with three-year-old children are in dire distress. How, then, is their distress met? In enlightened communities through the agency of organized charity dis- pensed either from private sources or from public funds. The principle applied to the case of a widow with a three- year-old child applies with equal force to the widow with a twelve-year-old child. But let me venture further to say that when our American communities become thoroughly civilized, we shall go much farther than this. We have already gone far enough in social appreciation to recognize the right of compensation to the soldier. If a man has gone across the border to kill the citizen of another country, or years ago passed down through this section to kill his own brother who chanced to wear a coat of gray, he is permitted to draw regularly upon our public treasury in reward for that "public service." Let us be reasonable as well as gen- erous. Compare the service of the man who goes across the border to kill another human being with that of the woman who goes to the gates of death to bring another human being into the world. The time will come when, unless some better solution is offered than yet appears, our communities will say to such a woman, "in giving birth and food and raiment to your brood of little ones, you have made so substantial a contribution to the wealth of this community that in par- tial reward for your services rendered, you shall be main- tained in honor, and not as an object of charity until they are old enough to care for themselves." We shall cease to visit upon the widow in straightened circumstances the un- natural dilemma which no other species of the animal king- dom visits upon its mother — the choice of starving or feed- ing upon its young. The case of the dependent father is different. And while there are no doubt mature men who are unable to perform any heavier labor than dinner toting, and while there are men in all parts of the country who, seeking work find none, it must be said with all emphasis that child labor is never the solution of such a need. On the other hand the over- CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 77 whelming testimony of modern industrial history points to the fact that child labor aggravates adult unemployment — the child in the mill means the father on the street. NEED OP BIRTH REGISTRATION. We readily admit that the attempt to enforce good child labor laws will be very difficult without an adequate system of birth registration — ^this difficulty is met everywhere — and one of the most important demands upon society throughout the country is a system of birth registration which shall be as nearly as possible complete. But I can think of no other act that will emphasize with greater defi- niteness the need for birth registration than a law which places upon an employer the responsibility for knowing the ago of the child he employs. A few damage suits on behalf of children whose hands are mutilated in the mill, whether decided in favor of the manufacturer who employed the child, or of the parent who lied about his age, will help create a healthy sentiment in favor of such public records as shall put an end to our present guess work. THE HOOKWORM. I shall take no time to discuss comparison of conditions of the child in the cotton mill with the child on the hook- worm infested farm, because the two problems are not necessarily related. If the sanitary commission is right in its belief that by proper education in sanitary conveniences the farm lands of the South may be made wholesome, that part of the problem solves itself, and there need be no more campaigning to take the farmers away from their crude in- dependence to rescue them from this disease. Even assum- ing that the commission is incorrect, that hookworm cannot be cured on the farm, have we any proof that the cotton mill vdll cure it? Those who fight child labor reform by making a bogyman of the hookworm fail to recognize the difference between a cotton mill and a cotton mill village. Suppose the family ig 78 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH greatly improved in health surroundings by removing from the farm to the village, is that any reason why little children should be incarcerated for a twelve-hour day in a cotton mill? Does it not, on the other hand, constitute the strong- est argument for giving these children such educational advantages as the village school affords? And bringing more adults to the mill village to take the place of that twenty per cent of children who will be excluded. WORK AND IDLENESS. There is no argument with which to meet the objection of the man who opposes child labor reform because he fearg that the children driven from the mill will become idlers on the street, except the argument of experience. In many American communities, both North and South, it is distress- ing to witness the army of youth from sixteen to twenty-one years of age loitering about the streets with no occupation and no desire for one. And often we find that these unem- ployed young people are in their present idleness, either be- cause they have become weary of the monotony of mill life or because they are unwilling to attempt competition with the wage standards of the little children who are at work. Even were it true that child labor laws promote child idleness, the objection is not final. A few years ago we were engaged in a vigorous campaign to secure factory inspection in South Carolina. The objection raised was of two kinds: 1. That there was no need of factory inspection because by a gentlemen's agreement among manufacturers, no child under the legal age of twelve years was employed in the mill. 2. That if factory inspection should make the law more stringent it would be a misfortune because children would be thrown out of the mill and on the street in idleness. When the factory inspector was finally appointed four years ago, he reported to us at the end of his first three months that he had taken over 1,500 little children illegally employed from the mills of that state. There has been a CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 79 positive epidemic of schoolhouse building in South Carolina ever since. If it is compulsory attendance law we want, the most effectual way we can work for them is to force the young child out of the mills by good child labor laws. Peo- ple may be complacent about the employment of little chil- dren for an eleven-hour day inside the walls of a cotton mill, but when thousands of children begin to swarm the streets with nothing definite to do the necessity for educa- tional opportunities is apparent to everyone. I return to the proposition advanced at the beginning that there is no argument against the restriction of child labor in the South which does not apply with equal force elsewhere. The whole structure of industry built on child labor is built upon a false foundation. The people of this country will soon declare that the employment of little children in wage-earning occupations shall cease, and that the industrial burdens of society shall rest upon shoulders strong enough to bear them. RECORD OP PROGRESS. It was for this purpose that the National Child Labor Committee was organized eight years ago. From then to the present time, we have urged the importance of making the laws in all states substantially uniform, so that what- ever disturbance might come to business interests or to edu- cational institutions would be equitably borne. And what is the results of this eight years of campaign for the estab- lishment of uniform child labor laws? Less uniformity than at the beginning. The total improvement is gratifying. During 1911, better child labor laws were enacted in thirty States and during the eight years no State has taken a back- ward step. In this period many organizations of national prominence — e. g.. The American Bar Association, have not only recognized the need for uniformity in State laws, but have agreed on a plan to adopt. This plan includes the es- tablishment of a fourteen-year age limit for children in all wage-earning occupations; it contends that below this age no child should be regarded as an economic asset ; children 80 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH under sixteen shall not be employed to exceed eight hours a day, nor at night, nor in dangerous occupations, nor unless normally developed physically and mentally; in extra haz- ardous occupations no child under eighteen shall be em- ployed ; and in industries involving a high moral hazard, as the night messenger service, no minors under twenty-one years of age shall be employed between the hours of ten at night and five in the morning. Six States have already adopted this high standard, and seven others standards slightly lower. The plan also provides definite methods for proving the age of children seeking employment and of issuing certificates, and then throws specific responsibility upon State officials for carrying out the provisions of the law. During the present year the main provisions of this bill have been enacted into law in Mississippi and Maryland, and the bill has just passed the upper House in Arizona and the lower House in New Mexico, which indicates that the South is coming forward by rapid strides. During this pe- riod also fairly satisfactory laws have been enacted in Ken- tucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. But despite these encouraging symptoms of reform, the fact remains that our ideal of uniformity in State child labor laws is almost as far from realization as eight years ago. The disparity between State laws is wider, because while the exclusion of children under fourteen from wage- earning industries has swept the Northern and Western States; while the eight-hour day has been established for children under sixteen, and in some instances under eight- een, in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, New York, and many of the Western States ; while systems of factory inspection have been improved in some quarters and responsibility has been definitely fixed ; while in a word many States have been forging to the front and approach- ing a standard of reasonable regulation for the employment of children the chief manufacturing States of the South have been lagging behind. Alabama, Georgia, and the two Carolinas stand almost where they stood eight years ago. Some change has been made it is true, and the advance is CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 81 gratifying, but it is still possible for a child of twelve years in Alabama to work sixty hours a week and for a child of fourteen to work legally more than all the hours of day- light. The only encouraging feature in Alabama is the conscientious and intelligent activity of the State factory inspector whose duties in addition to visiting all cotton mills in the State involve inspection of all jails and alms- houses. In Georgia and South Carolina the age limit has been pushed up to twelve years, but the effort to raise it above twelve has thus far failed, and in North Carolina it has been impossible to advance it beyond thirteen years. Only within the past two years have North Carolina and Georgia shortened the weekly hours of work for little chil- dren from sixty-six to sixty hours. But it is unnecessary to show this comparison in further detail. The obligation upon American society, if it does not be- lieve in the continuation of child labor, is to unite for the advancement of standards in the Southern manufacturing States, to the level of the rest of the civilized world, and unless some argument can be advanced which has not yet appeared showing why child labor should be allowed to con- tinue, the people of the South must rally to stamp out this abuse and not longer apologize for it. I do not ignore the fact that those who come in closest contact with the textile workers — the cotton manufacturers and their friends — claim that when the right time comes they will put an end to child labor, but they must not be forced by "paid reformers." They come repeatedly before legis- lative committees and the public to tell us that we do not understand the mill toilers that they are doing everything to improve the conditions of the mill people; they point to the two score mills that are doing welfare work in the great cotton manufacturing belt and these are published as typical of the whole system. No doubt these manufacturers do understand the mill people better than we. The feudal lord has always done that, but here are a few points that you teachers, and clergymen, and social workers, can see and that I believe we all recognize are important consid- erations in the further development of our democracy. 82 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH We cannot fail to perceive the decay of that spirit of personal independence which has characterized our Appala- chian Mountaineers throughout our history. When these people come to the mill villages and move into a company house ; till or neglect a company garden ; worship in a com- pany church ; and send their children either to the company schoolhouse or the cotton mill what in this new environment is to conserve that spirit of independence which has made the mountaineer the stalwart champion of virtue and integrity, or when misdirected has flamed up in fierce protest against fancied oppression. There is something ominous in the fostering of a system which saps the spirit of personal re- sponsibility and reduces the individual to a cog in an indus- trial machine. We are also compelled to observe the continued poverty that rests like a mantle of sack-cloth upon the lives of many of these people. The alluring cry of $2 a day in the cotton mill and the employment of children to add to the income has drawn many a farmer from his own home, where in the absence of ready cash, rough and wholesome provisions supplied the actual necessities. In the new environment the family learns to its dismay that everything used must be paid for and in many instances at the end of a few months or a few years the family returns broken to its mountain home or drags out a miserable future in the mill village from which it has become too poor to remove. Returning to close where we began let us frankly recog- nize that child labor continues here and in other parts of the country because those who defend it believe it pays. Is it not fair to suppose that the railroad president and the college president, the teacher, the preacher, the social work- er, the Y. M. C. A. Secretary, and the farmer are as inter- ested in the social welfare of the factory child as the cotton manufacturer or the oyster packer. Yet every legislative session which proposes a good child labor law witnesses this unique spectacle of opposition to such improvement only from those who profit by the system, or from their adher- ents, and their opposition is always for the sake of the child. This solitary protest looks suspicious. In these days of CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 83 public awakening on questions of the cost of living and the burdens on the consuming public, it requires no special skill in prophesy to predict that the time will soon come when those who persistently infest congressional halls to plead for government subsidy in the way of tariff; those who systematically mulct the public to protect their industries from that very open competition which in theory they champion ; those who by their policy admit that their indus- try is a pauper industry living by the grace of public char- ity, will be asked by an outraged public whether with one hand they propose to take the gifts of money from the Amer- ican laboring man while at the same time with the other hand they continue to throttle his little child. III. COURTS AND PRISONS The Purpose of Imprisonment Prison Conditions in the South The Jails of Alabama Municipal and Misdemeanor Offenders The Indeterminate Sentence and Probation System The Object of Imprisonment Fundamental Inequalities of Administration of Laws The Prisoner's Side An Observation THE PURPOSE OF IMPRISONMENT.* G. W. DYER, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN. Punishment of crime is as old as human society. In all ages, in all nations, under all conditions, some sort of pun- ishment has been inflicted for violation of the laws of so- ciety. But up to within a century or two ago, while men were imprisoned from the beginning, imprisonment was for detention, not for punishment. The idea of imprisoning men as a means of punishment is comparatively new. The honor of originating this idea belongs to Pope Clement, the Eleventh. In 1704 over the door of a house of correction he made the announcement that the object of this institution was to reform criminal boys by a system of training. But this was not a prison ; while it included something like 500 inmates, there were only about 50 criminal boys in the in- stitution. The honor of originating the modern prison system be- longs to John Howard, an Englishman, who was born in 1726 and died in 1790. John Howard was a plain English- man of obscure origin, a boy that couldn't learn at school, simple-minded, simple-hearted, and never could learn to spell. But he had an intense faith in God, coupled with an intense enthusiasm to do something for his unfortunate brothers. He spent 16 years of his life, at the close of his life, in traveling and working at his own expense in the interest of prison reform. He went to practically every known country at that day, investigating prisons. As a result of his efforts the English Parliament appointed a committee, of which he was a member, and this committee drew up a plan which was enacted by the English Parlia- ment into a law, which practically includes all of the great principles of prison reform of today. There are two classes of men imprisoned by society un- der our present conditions ; one class are imprisoned for the *Publislied from stenograpliic notes. 88 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH purpose of detaining them until their trial. The presump- tion of the law is that these men are all innocent, and hence society is obligated to them in a different way from what it is to those that have been accredited guilty. It is a tre- mendous hardship on men to be arrested and kept in jail when the presumption is that they are innocent, and in a great many cases they are innocent. In a great many cases they are innocent even when they are accounted guilty, be- cause under our modern system it is not certain at all that the man who is convicted is guilty or the man who is ac- quitted is innocent. Now to this class of men society owes something. It is a hardship at the best; but society must furnish them, and it is obligated to furnish them, wholesome conditions of life while in prison, physical, moral and intellectual. Every jail should be made, as far as possible, a place that will be con- ducive to the uplifting of those men and women who are presumed to be innocent. Society has no right, no moral right, to take a man, acting on the presumption that he is innocent, and put him in a prison that is hurtful either to his body, to his mind or to his character. The purposes of society in the imprisonment of those that have been convicted may be brought under three heads : (1) To protect society from the anti-social acts of the crim- inal. This right is recognized everywhere, not only with reference to criminals, but with reference to others, to the insane and to others. Society has the right, and should exer- cise it, to segregate, to shut up, those that endanger the so- cial order. A man's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is based on the assumption that he is not anti- social, that his acts are not contrary to the best interests of society ; and whenever he by any act of his shows that he is anti-social, he no longer has the right or can claim the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This principle is very broad. It applies not only to individuals, but to business and to institutions. No individual, no busi- ness, no corporation, no institution, no custom, can defend its right to live in society which cannot prove to society that it is not anti-social. THE PURPOSE OF IMPRISONMENT 89 The second purpose of imprisonment is to so punish the criminal that the punishment may awalcen in those outside a fear that will restraiin them from this and from other crimes. Now when we come to a discussion or considera- tion of punishment and of the effect of punishment on men, on the individual and on others, we are very much at sea. The world has been making grievous mistakes on this from the beginning. We need here all of the philosophical insight, all of the scientific research, all that can come to us from philosophy, science and psychology to study this problem. Here is exemplified the fact, as perhaps nowhere else, that things are not what they seem. For a long time the world went on the principle that the more severe the punishment on the individual the greater its effects to deter others, but after following this for centuries and centuries and centu- ries, they found out that this was not true, that severe pun- ishment often causes a man to commit crimes rather than restrains him. When we had the custom of making hang- ings public the idea back of it was, if you made hanging public and let all the people come in, that this example would be wholesome and would restrain men and women from crime. But after a long time, we find as we believe, that it operated in the opposite direction, that it instigates crime rather than restrains crime. Lynching in many cases is due more to a bad philosophy than to bad motives. The philosophy of a number of men who may engage in lynching or encourage lynching is this, that the more severe the punishment the greater will be the restraint. But we are finding now that this is funda- mentally wrong, and in no department of human life and human study is there a better example of man's natural stupidity than in his dealing with crime and the criminal. So we must be very particular in inflicting punishment on the individual with this object in view, that the punish- ment you inflict really tends to deter others and not to en- courage them in crime. This is wonderfully brought out in the great novel of Victor Hugo. This is the philosophy of Tolstoi — while I do not subscribe to his conclusions — there is a world of truth in the great principle he has given to 90 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH the world, that you cannot overcome evil with evil, but you must overcome the evil, if you overcome it at all, with good. I remember when I was in military school as a boy, and it was a pretty tough military school, too. I don't know how much I added to this part of its character. But the faculty made a rule on one occasion that it was a most serious offense to throw coal in barracks. I don't think any of them thought much about it until this rule was given and a very severe penalty put on for anybody caught throw- ing coal in barracks. They would be arrested, put under guard and sent home. Well, as soon as the rule went into effect it was dangerous to step out into the hall of the barracks ; coal was coming from every direction. It became serious, and they actually had to put on guards in every hall on account of the big lumps of coal that hurtled down the hall. There is something in human nature we havn't yet un- derstood, and it is very necessary for us to understand if we are to cope with this problem at all intelligently. Another thing with reference to this punishment of the victim for the purpose of detering others. There are lim- itations to this principle. We must go back to find why this man committed the crime. Some one has said that every society has the criminals that it deserves, and in many in- stances the one guilty of the crime is not the unfortunate victim, but the man or the men that made the environment which forced him into crime. A boy has nothing to do with where he is born or with the conditions before his birth, or with the conditions under which he grows up. Society settles this, and society must shoulder the responsibility for it. It is grossly unjust for society to foster and protect a criminal environment and then take up the unfortunate vic- tims and punish them as a means of deterring others from going into the same crime. If any are to be punished, and surely some should be, it should be the officials who foster these conditions. Better still, it should be the so-called respectable people who are too cowardly to come out and say they foster them, but will keep in office the officials that will do what they really want to be done. THE PURPOSE OP IMPRISONMENT 91 The third, and I can't discuss this, and by far the most important purpose of imprisonment is to reform the crim- inal and restore him to an orderly life. We haven't as yet come on the outer surface of the possibilities here. The criminal is capable of reform. After studying scientific charities for years and teaching scientific charities for some time, and feeling that I knew something about charity, I stopped one night on the streets of Chattanooga and listened for a while to a little Salvation Army fellow talk on charity. I don't suppose he ever heard of scientific charity, he didn't know there was such a thing perhaps; but he knew some- thing about the philosophy of charity and crime and I learned more from that little Salvation Army fellow there in ten minutes than, I believe, I learned from all the books I ever studied. And he said this: "We are often criticised for trying to lift up the worthless criminal and pauper. Some time ago I found a poor unfortunate woman right down at the very depths, and gave her a hand and lifted her up and put her in a better environment. The people said, she is unworthy, there is nothing in her, you can't do any- thing with her, you are wasting your efforts, money and time, she is unworthy. In answer I said. Our mission is to the unworthy ; this is the very class of people to whom we are sent. And why are they dead beats, why are they anti- social, why are they unworthy? In many cases it is because they feel that it is impossible for them ever to stand upon their feet again; that there is no hope; that society gives no future to them. This it is that makes them bad. Go to them with a message of brotherhood and love and tell them that they can stand, that they can fight the battle, that they can be orderly and pure and virtuous. Carry this message to them and they respond." I tell you, my friends, when we get hold of the possibilities of that in dealing with criminals, it will cause a complete revolution, because thousands and thousands of these men who are using their lives to destroy society, if approached in the right way and by the right people, will become powers for social righteousness and will give their lives to build up rather than tear down society. 92 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH. TOM FINTY, JR. STAFF CORRESPONDENT, GALVESTON-DALLAS NEWS, DALLAS, TEX. It would be impossible within the time allotted to me to give anything like an adequate description of prison condi- tions in the South. Therefore, it has seemed to me that I might most profitably employ this time in making a general statement as to certain of such conditions, of the major causes of the same and of the forces which conspire to the perpetuation of such conditions. It is my intention to treat the subject from a political, rather than from a penological standpoint, for the way to penology is through the door of politics. For many years the prisons of the South afforded the prize horror copy for those magazine writers who antedated the term "muckraking," but within recent years the muck- rakers have done little in the way of kicking our dog around. This comparative immunity is due in part to some im- provement in our prisons. There has not been enough im- provement, however, to justify us in standing pat or in sitting still. There might have been much more improve- ment but for the prevalence of certain false notions, which it is my purpose to name and discuss. The first of these is the notion that there is an independ- ent prison problem, and that prisons are to be considered and conducted without relation to anything else. As a mat- ter of fact, the prison problem is but one phase of the great social and political problem, and it cannot be successfully met until all phases of the greater problem are considerd in their proper relation toward each other. REFORM FORCES OF REFORM. It is fortunate, therefore, that Governor Hooper has called this congress to consider all phases of the social prob- lem ; fortunate for a number of reasons. Public conscious- ness of the problem in all of its ramifications and to its full PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 93 extent is needed. We of the South have said that we ought to be left free to solve our problems. We ought, therefore, earnestly to strive to solve them. In the past our efforts in this regard have been lame and halting, largely, as I believe, because of unwholesome competition. We haVe too many unrelated organizations endeavoring to cover the same field, in consequence of which there has been much confusion and much waste of energy. Our reform forces need reforming. If, through this Sociological Congress, we shall succeed in reducing our efforts to a business basis, applying the trust principle in behalf of society and amalgamating the various forces working for social reforms in the South, this event will become epochal. "WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR?" A Texas delegate to a national political convention ren- dered himself famous by the inquiry, "What are we here for ?" We, too, must know what we are here for if we are to achieve substantial social progress. We must have a base line for operations. The history of our Southern prisons well illustrates the absence of such a base line, the absence of a definite purpose. In this regard we have been like a ship without a chart. Only a very narrow man would ascribe all of the defects in our prison systems to a single cause. Some of the defects are of ancient origin. But the perpetuation of these old defects and the addition of new ones have been largely due to the practice of selling convict labor, and that is true even where such practice has been abandoned. In order to be fair, to avoid misunderstanding and to save time, I wish to say at this juncture that I do not con- demn the purchasers of prison labor, as a class, nor do I condemn all officers who have mismanaged prisons. I know some good men in both of these classes. Nor do I say that all prisons operated upon State account are properly con- ducted. What I do say is that State account operation is conducive to wholesome results, whereas the hiring system makes such results almost, if not quite, impossible. 94 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ORIGIN OP LEASE SYSTEM. There is some consolation in the thought that the people of the South are not responsible for establishing the system of leasing convicts. But they have been responsible for the perpetuation, openly or in various disguises, of that system. It is not unbecoming in me to say this, for I originated three miles north of the famous and now somewhat bedimmed line, and for twenty-five years I have lived several hundred miles south of it. In so far as I have been able to learn, every State of the South operated its prisons upon State account prior to the war between the States, but their prisons were put upon lease either by the military governments or the reconstruc- tion governments. I know that this is true as to a number of these States. EXPERIENCE OP TEXAS. The experience of Texas is rather illustrative of the gen- eral experience of the Southern States. The report of the superintendent of the Texas State prison for 1870 revealed most deplorable conditions. This prison was overcrowded. Its population ranged in age from 7 years to 94 years. Per- sons were sent to State prison for the most trivial of offenses, such as the theft of a 50c piece or a chicken coop. The Legislature in the preceding year had made no appro- priation for the prison. There was no money for purchasing materials for its industries or supplies for subsistence. The prison was enabled to run at all only because of generous citizens who furnished supplies at great risk. In this situation the superintendent made a most touch- ing appeal to the Legislature for appropriations. The an- swer was an order to lease the prison. A lease was made. Under it the prison was no longer a burden to the State gov- ernment, but, instead, it produced a revenue. In 1872 the lessee, in a paper read before the National Prison Congress, won plaudits by his recital of the humane practices and highly reformative influences said to prevail in PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 95 the Texas prison. He "certainly gave himself a powerful fine recommendation." In 1874 the State's inspector in his annual report eloquently praised the system. A year later an official investigation revealed the most horrible conditions and practices. The State changed lessees. Other explosions followed. Reform was demanded. The Legislature abolished the lease system, and provided for a contract system, with the further proviso that the Prison Board should arrange to work all convicts upon State account "as soon as possible." Liberal construction of this latter proviso, and the failure of the State Government to provide capital for the extension of plant and proper operation of industries, delayed the realiza- tion of the State account policy for thirty years more. LEASE SYSTEM IN FLORIDA. Only one of the Southern States now has the lease system completely. This is Florida. I do not know that it is sig- nificant that Florida also has the largest number of felony prisoners in proportion to the whole number of its inhabi- tants of any of the Southern States, for it is impossible, for many reasons, to institute a satisfactory comparison of prison population. Florida leases all of its prisoners of both sexes for work in turpentine and lumber camps for the flat sum of $281.60 per capita per annum net. A large part of the earnings is distributed to the counties. Something is being done toward getting lands with the view of working the prisoners upon State account. FIVE STATES ABOLISH IT. Five of the Southern States have completely abolished the lease, contract and other hiring systems. These are Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas. All other Southern States sell convict labor to some extent. Louisiana abolished the lease and contract system eleven years ago, and the convicts of that State are employed upon State farms and at levee building. 96 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Mississippi took a similar step a few years ago, and now employs all of its prisoners upon farms owned by the State, making a profit of a quarter of a million dollars per annum. Georgia abolished the lease system a few years ago. About one-twentieth of the whole number of its convicts are fciuartered on a State farm; and this is the extent of its State prison system. About 5,000 convicts, equally divided as between felony prisoners and misdemenants, are allotted to the several counties for building roads. The Oklahoma Constitution prohibits the selling of con- vict labor in any way. This State removed its prisoners from the Kansas penitentiary about three years ago, since which time they have been employed in prison construction and in developing a farm. Two years ago, when the Texas prison reform law was enacted, about half of the 3,500 State convicts were under contract. The law requires that all of them shall be working upon State account not later than February 1, 1914. All are now so working, except about 200 that are employed on contracts which were made before the law was passed and which do not expire until January 1, 1913. On the first of next year the abolition of the contract system will be com- plete. Most of the Texas prisoners are employed on great plantations owned and operated by the State, and the others within the walls at manufacturing of various kinds. ALABAMA UNIQUE. Alabama is in a class to itself, having three systems in simultaneous operation. The lease system has practically given way to the contract system. At the date of the last report about 175 convicts were leased, and the labor of 1,744 was sold under contract, mostly for coal mining, and also for work in foundries, sawmills, turpentine camps and on farms ; 648 were worked upon State account, at farming and in a cotton mill. In addition there were 724 county convicts leased. The profits of the system to the State are said to be $500,000 per annum. In Arkansas some of the convicts are employed on State farms ; such counties as desire to do so may retain their con- PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 97 victs to work on public roads, and some of the convicts are contracted for railroad construction. At the main prison of Tennessee most of the able con- victs are contracted for manufacturing of various kinds, and at the branch prison at Petros about 700 convicts work in the State's coal mines, Virginia at the date of the last report had 1,229 pris- oners contracted to manufacture shoes, 284 working on State farms and 605 building public roads. Besides this» the State prison system has charge of 531 "jail men" em- ployed on the roads. A recent law extends the road system and will cut down the contracted forces. North Carolina permits its counties to retain their con- victs and work them in chain gangs at road building. How many of these are so employed the reports do not show. The State is left to deal chiefly with the diseased and infirm. It has control of 775 prisoners, about 400 of whom are em- ployed on State farms and 300 are contracted for railroad construction. SOUTH CAROLINA METHODS. South Carolina, at the last report, had 806 State convicts, of whom 171 were employed on State farms, 40 on county chain gangs, 121 at the reformatory and 444 within the walls. About 300 of these work in a hosiery factory, which, it seems, is operated by contractors. Kentucky, in 1911, contracted the labor of most of its able-bodied convicts, 1,380 prisoners being so contracted. The prison subject received considerable attention at the hands of the last Legislature, resulting in a change as to the method of selecting the Prison Board. It will be observed that Alabama and Tennessee work convicts in coal mines. Oklahoma has a law prohibiting the working of convicts underground. Texas has no law upon the subject, but it canceled the last of its mine contracts three years ago. CROP OF FALSE NOTIONS. The system of selling the labor of convicts has sown a great crop of false notions in a fertile field. From this 98 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH planting has grown the ideas that, since convicts are law- breakers, they are not entitled to consideration, and since they have wronged society, society is entitled, by way of re- prisal, to make a cash profit out of prisoners, and that it is impossible to reform convicts. Not objecting in particular to the premises, I dissent from the conclusions. Convicts, with rare exceptions, are guilty; many of them do not deserve consideration upon their own account. Nevertheless, they ought to be consid- ered upon our account. Several things have conspired to help along the false ideas. Politicians with a restricted view of government have fallen for them. Our constitutions indicate or declare that government is to be economically administered. These politicians conclude, therefore, that low expenditures and a low tax rate are evidences of economy and efficiency, which they are not necessarily. The conversion of the prisons into a revenue-producing asset, instead of a liability, looked good to them. Thus the idea became established that prisons should be operated primarily for profit. EFFECTS CONTINUE. And these conclusions have been confirmed in the minds of many people by the observation that certain prison sys- tems which had been placed wholly or in part upon State account produced no better results in the way of reforming convicts than did the labor selling prisons. Many persons of good intention have misinterpreted such failures of the State account system, and by reason of misunderstanding and impatience have hindered reform. These do not under- stand that a change to State account and the enactment of a reform law simply constitute a beginning; they do not ap- preciate the fact that, in order to achieve substantial gains in any line of social reform, one must be "as patient as the Catholic Church." The truth is these failures are attrib- utable to the fact that the cash profit idea survives the lease system ; to the fact that many prison officials and other offi- cers of State are influenced still by their training under the lease system and are not in sympathy with other policies, PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 99 and to the further fact that men who have purchased the labor of convicts and think it right to do so have in many cases throw^n obstacles in the w^ay of conducting the prisons on State account. OBSTACLE TO REFORM. But perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of rational prison reform and all other branches of social reform is the fact that many workers in the vineyard are controlled by sentimental reasoning, rather than by business prin- ciples. These make precisely the same appeal for govern- mental action that they do for private aid. They assert that it is the humanitarian and religious duty of government to do things for the prisoner, for the child, for the insane, for the delinquent. They declare that the purpose of govern- ment has changed ; that formerly the government was con- cerned only in the matter of protecting the people, but now it must do for their welfare. All of this is wrong. We can properly appeal to individ- uals to privately help other individuals upon humanitarian and religious grounds, and it is highly desirable that we should do so, but we cannot tax men for such purpose and upon such grounds. Our government is impersonal ; it has no religion ; it cannot properly exact money from its citizens to help individuals for the sake of those individuals. The constitutions of some of the States prohibit that very thing. The government can help an individual only when by sa doing it benefits society. PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT. Nor is it true that the purpose of government has under- gone a change. Its purpose has ever been to protect society. Everything which it does along the so-called welfare line has protection as the object. If there has been a change, it is simply that we have gone in for higher protection, we have come to understand that new conditions call for new protective agencies and methods. Formerly It was thought sufficient for the government merely to arrest and punish 100 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH lawbreakers. Now, after the fashion of preventive med- icine, we are seeking even through the government to pre- vent people from becoming lawbreakers. We no longer content ourselves with punishing fast and reckless drivers; we have traffic policemen who prevent accidents largely by direction. This has involved no extension of purpose. Men, especially in the South, are reluctant to abandon the old moorings, and it is, therefore, unfortunate that there should be talk of so doing when nothing of the sort is really contemplated. Also, a good deal of time is wasted in sentimental appeals and unprofitable argument. There is a quicker and surer way to get results. This I can illustrate by com- mending to your consideration a prescription which I have used with good results in the case of men who deny that prisons ought to be conducted for reformative purposes. Unfortunately, we have many such men, even in public station, in the South. To these I say: NO MIDDLE GROUND. "I will not debate the question with you. Our criminal code recognizes the redeemability of convicts, for it provides for the return of most of them to society after a term of years. If you are sincere in your belief that they cannot be reformed, then it is your duty to advocate the amendment of our criminal code so that all persons convicted of crime shall be put to death or else imprisoned for the rest of their lives. If the present laws are to stand, we must treat pris- oners who are to return to society so that they shall be fit to move therein. If we are not going to so treat them, then we must close the prison doors on them forever. There is no middle ground." STRIKING A BASE LINE. This brings us to a statement of the real purposes of prisons. They constitute one of the agencies which govern- ment employs for the protection of society. The design is that prisons shall (1) keep dangerous men apart from PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 101 society, (2) punish these men, in order, for one thing, that others may be deterred from doing evil, and (3) reform these men and refit them for society. When the prisons of a State perform these functions, society receives a dividend infinitely to be preferred to any cash profit which might be derived from the labor of con- victs. When it does not receive this dividend, society is cheated or cheats itself. This, then, must be our base line — we are not working in behalf of the convict, but in behalf of society. There is no vital difference between the prison question and the question of public education. We are not educating children at pub- lic expense for the sake of the children, but, instead, for the sake of society. Were it otherwise, we could not justly tax bachelors for the support of schools. To protect society, the arrest, conviction and prison treatment of lawbreakers vdll not suffice. Something comes before and something follows. Prisons deal with ruined men. What ruins them ? If we would have men walk in the narrow path of obedience to the law, we must light the way, and we must lead as well as drive. JAILS NEED ATTENTION. When we speak of prisons we usually mean State prisons, and in these, even in those operated upon State account, there is much that is wrong. But the awful fact is not to be ignored that we have county and city jails which are breed, ers both of incurably insane and incorrigibly criminal. Thus far the local jails of the South have received little public at- ention, Florida and Oklahoma seemingly being the only States that have established State inspection of these places. We cannot hope to make substantial progress in any part of the prison system until the jail problem has been dealt with in a radical way. I may remark, as the result of observa- tion, that inspection alone is not sufficient. AFTER-PROBLEM NEGLECTED. Of almost equal importance is the after-problem. Our method of dealing with discharged convicts is utterly inde- 102 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH fensible. A certificate of discharge from prison ought to be tantamount to a letter of recommendation from the State, Otherwise its bearer ought not to be discharged. But in fact the idea widely prevails that convicts cannot be reformed, and, therefore, that ex-convicts are not to be trusted. This idea is based largely upon the fact that many ex-convicts return to crime. Why do they return to crime ? First, be- cause of a defect in our methods of sentencing convicts, of which I shall speak later; second, because our prisons are deficient in reformative work; third, because of the condi- tions under which convicts are released and the popular prejudice which makes it difficult for an ex-convict to get a footing in a world to which he has become alien. The States of the South are doing practically nothing in the way of starting discharged prisoners in the right way, and there is an almost total absence of extra legal effort in that regard. The one notable exception is the work being done by Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth, of the Volunteers of America, through Hope Hall at New Orleans. I know from personal experience with many ex-convicts, as well as from observation, that a helping hand rather than a policeman's club is most needed to keep these men from going back to the ways of crime. COURT OF REHABILITATION. But there are some convicts who do not yield to the best prison treatment, and who when liberated inevitably go back to crime. Clearly the only way to prevent their so doing is to keep them prisoners. It is a common thing for prison officials in discharging convicts to predict that certain of them will soon return. Indeed, the convicts themselves sometimes so predict. Here is the most inexcusable ana- chronism in our whole scheme of government. A few years ago Roland B. Molineux published a mono- graph in which he strikingly amplified the idea of indeter- minate sentences. He argued that all men convicted of crime ought to be sentenced to indefinite banishment from society, and none of them should ever be permitted to return PRISON CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH 103 to society except he should be able to establish, in a court to be provided for that purpose, that he had rehabilitated him- self. It is certainly absurd, as Molineux suggested, to rate the sentence according to the success of the crime. The bur- glar who steals $10 may be as unfit to move in society as the man who steals $10,000. Each steals all that there is in sight. It is absurd also to expect a judge or jury to deter- mine in advance how long a person should be imprisoned in order to be refitted for society. A doctor might as well en- deavor to determine at the inception of a case of smallpox the exact day for the discharge of the patient. In so far as our prisons are concerned, the protection of society de- mands that all persons unfit to be at large shall be sent to prison ; that these persons shall be subjected to reformative influences, and that every one of them shall be kept in such banishment until it is established that he is fit for liberty. On each of these three points we are deficient. The court of rehabilitation idea has been formulated in a tentative bill recommended to the Legislature of Oklahoma by Miss Kate Barnard, the able and talented Superintendent of Charities and Corrections for that State. FOR THE GOOD OF ALL. And, now, in conclusion, let me say that I have used my text in an endeavor to emphasize the thought that nowhere in government is there room for hate or pity of any indi- vidual, nor room for consideration of personal gain ; only is there room to consider the welfare, the protection, of all; and we cannot hope to succeed considerably in prison re- form, nor along any other line of social reform, except we shall keep that idea to the front. 104 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH THE JAILS OF ALABAMA. VV. H. GATES, B.S., M.D., ALABAMA STATE PRISON INSPECTOR, MONTGOMERY, ALA. The spirit of altruistic progress has not, in any field of needed reform, manifested itself more plainly than in prison reform. Nor has there been any field in which reform was more sorely needed. In discussing the hardships of a sailor's life, Dr. Samuel Johnson was once moved to say that he could not conceive of any man who had so little intelligence as to be a sailor if he possessed sufficient ingenuity to get into jail. Had the famous doctor inspected the surround- ings of many American prisons of even this date he would, I think, have adopted some other illustration. While most of those who are confined in jails are there simply for safe-keeping and awaiting trial, and therefore presumptively innocent, they have been, as a rule, housed in unclean, ill-ventilated structures, with no room for exercise and scant if any provision for, and no incentive to, personal cleanliness, and exposed to every peril of fire and disease. Their food has been coarse, ill-prepared and ill-served, and every auxiliary with which modern science fortifies the physical constitution against the inroads of disease has been conspicuous by its absence. Nor has there been any pro- vision whatever against that idleness of mind which begets viciousness and is the fertile breeding ground of crime. My own State, I am happy to say, has recently revised its prison inspection law, and while it is by no means com- plete, nor a perfectly eflfective instrument for the purpose designed, it is, in the powers given and the duties placed upon its prison inspector, a tremendous advance upon the former system. Since its enactment slightly more than a year ago the prisoners in Alabama jails receive at least the consideration that is due a human being. Thirty jails in the State have in that time been rebuilt along scientific lines, and in all the jails in the State an excellent sanitary system has been insisted upon and attained. Light and THE JAILS OF ALABAMA 105 air are freely admitted, conditions which made for infec- tion have been removed, and food is served which may be eaten without the spur of extreme hunger. This law makes it the duty of the prison inspector to inspect each jail in the State at least twice a year, and as often as he may deem necessary. It also confers upon him the power to have all jails put in a proper sanitary con- dition, and to make such repairs, alterations and additions as he may deem necessary, and if in his opinion the situa- tion requires it, to condemn the jail and order the erection of a new one. From his orders an appeal lies only to the Governor. As to the present Executive, I may say that only manifest error on the part of the inspector in making the order of condemnation would entitle any such appeal to consideration at his hands. Political, nor other, influence would not in the slightest degree affect his action where the welfare of the helpless and unfortunate are involved. So, I have fortunately been unhampered by any interference with the efl[icient administration of the law. An effective weapon placed by this law in the hands of the inspector is his power to order the removal of all prisoners from any jail in which they are improperly cared for, or which is unsafe, to the jail of another county; and as a large part of the compensation of Alabama sheriffs comes from the feeding of prisoners, it is needless to say that it has seldom been necessary to use it to secure proper food or fit conditions. In laws dealing with this subject it is, certainly at this period of the movement, absolutely essential to give the inspector almost arbitrary power. Unless his recommenda- tions can be summarily enforced, lapse of time, political affiliations and local sympathy with officers based on ignor- ancte of the real conditions, would paralyze or, at least, minimize, the effect of his efforts. Every jail inspection law should require and contain provisions which will effect- ively secure the building of jails throughout which light and air may be freely admitted, which has sufficient room for physical exercise, and which have provisions for securing the personal cleanliness of the inmates. There should be, of 106 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH course, provisions for a window in each separate cell. The prison should be so constructed as to be absolutely fireproof ; or if not, some provision should be made whereby each cell could be unlocked from one point. While no provision is made in our present law for other than the physical well-being of our prisoners, I trust that ultimately some will be made whereby they may be mentally advanced, or at least occupied. Modern criminology recog- nizes that crime is the product of some abnormality, and this lies as often in an unoccupied, as in a diseased, mind. A few magazines, a few well-selected books, might well drop a seed or commence a mental habit that would redeem a criminal and restore to society a citizen. I am aware that the suggestion of a prison library may be met in some quarters with ridicule, or labor under the charge of a maud- lin sentimentality, but I console myself with the thought that no reform was ever commenced, no work for the bet- terment of mankind ever engaged in that did not struggle under such discouragement from the unthinking public. It will be a happy day for society when some of its members may look upon a jail as a place where health was not lost, but regained, and where habits and mental attitudes were fixed, whose tendencies were not downward to evil, but upward to better things. MUNICIPAL AND MISDEMEANOR OFFENDERS. PHILIP WELTNER, GENERAL SECRETARY, PRISON ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA, ATLANTA, GA. The new conscience is asserting itself. The bad man has lost his terrors. Men no longer turn from him in fear and horror. He presents a problem that must be faced. Science is addressing itself to the task with results start- ling in the light of older conceptions. In all this forward movement the bottom round must MUNICIPAL AND MISDEMEANOR OFFENDERS 107 necessarily be the most fundamental. It is the police court which gets those who first go wrong. It is, therefore, the police court which has an opportunity to check careers of crime by doing the right thing at the right time. As at present administered a police court is good for but two things — cash revenue and convict labor. Its justice is measured by a yard-stick rule — $60 or thirty days. The ordinary police court may be likened to a quack doctor dis- pensing a dose, as distinguished from a treatment. And the dose is not even administered, but inflicted, regardless of the offender's conditions or circumstances. Go into a police court in one of our large Southern cities and you will some- times see as many as one hundred and fifty cases tried in a day. The judge has no time for the individual case. He has in most instances only the arresting officer to look to for assistance, and this man is usually interested only in the establishment of his case. The result is that justice is made to stoop to that conception of it possessed by the man on the beat. There is probably not a city in the South where the police do not make needless arrests. Every police court is crowded with those who must undergo needless suffering, the wives and children of the accused, a man whose only fault may have been an unintentional wrong. And what good does it do? Perhaps irredeemably hardened by the injustice of it all, the narrow cell, the degraded cell-mate, they fling back their mute defiance by again transgressing man's law, which they have come to despise. As long as we refuse to separate the crime from the man, so long as we punish the crime without taking thought of the man being punished, so long will our courts debase rather than uplift, and their sen- tence be a certificate of merit prized by the man who does not longer care. Petty offenses so crowd the police court docket that the police have no time to run down the dangerous crook and rid the city of his peril. The wiley blind tiger, the artful manipulator of the jimmy, and the crafty gambler get away with it, while the unschooled get caught. Our pun- ishment does not prevent; it merely makes wise. Under 108 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH such conditions the professional bondsman, the sedulous shyster, the unabashed blackmailer find abundant victims and easy money. The whole system is a mad juggernaut by which those prosper who of all persons ought to suffer. What effect has such a state of affairs on the police? Unable to stem the tide, they center their whole strength periodically upon particular classes of offenders — now it is the automobile speeder, now the crap-shooter, the pistol- toter, the unlicensed huckster and peddler, now the pros- titute, and then the vagrant, and so on ad infinitum. Hope- less of ever reducing crime, and without aspirations, they become mere man-hunters. They never dream of saving; their sole object is to pile up a record for arrests, convic- tions and paid fines. If this be the case, the logic of the situation immediate- ly points to the policeman as the target for reform. It is the blue-coat who must be inspired to take higher ground. It is he who, in learning his duties as guardian of the peace, must interpret them in the individual integrity of every man with whom he comes in contact. It has often puzzled me why the State should expect so little of the policeman, when his real function takes equal rank with the ministry itself. Any solution of the problems presented by municipal misdemeanants must come out of a more effectively organ- ized police court. Such a court depends on the individual fitness of the police officers. The first requisite for an effective police force is freedom from political domination. The individual must have but one master — the public ; must serve but one interest — that of the public. How can a community expect adherence to duty from a political hench- man? He acknowledges but one master — ^the man who put him on the city's pay-roll. But this is not that phase of the subject I came here to stress. To change older political systems may be necessary, if they exist at the expense of efficiency. It takes time to accomplish this, and we need not wait to better conditions. The first requisite is accurate knowledge of the facts out of which the problems arise. This is to be secured by the MUNICIPAL AND MISDEMEANOR OFFENDERS 109 discovery of primal causes, and the close study of the effect present methods may have on individual offenders. The public will not stand for snap judgments, and criticisms and nostrums, however plausible, when not backed by facts, are resented. We, reformers, are usually right; but right almost always too soon. We can double our efficiency if we let the other fellow discover for himself what we may al- ready know. Why not install a system, worked by the police department through its own officers, which will bring to light the desired information? Two things will be thus gained — the willing cooperation of the police in remedying the evils discovered and a readjustment of viewpoint of the policeman toward his duties. The system to which I turn for relief from present conditions is simple enough. It consists of a record card for each person arrested, giving the name and address of the accused, the charge, the officer, the place of arrest, the disposition of the case by the court, the accused's employ- ment record, his marital conditions, number of children, time in city, and the underlying cause for his crime or offense. This record is compiled from data gathered by the arresting officer and the receiving officer at the station. When the arrest is made the policeman puts down the name of the accused, the place of arrest and a concise statement of the circumstances of the arrest. This is sent in with the accused. The desk sergeant or precinct captain, as the case may be, further examines the accused, making a record of the additional items. The same card is used no matter how many subsequent charges are brought against the indi- vidual. This at the outset emphasizes the man as the prob- lem. We must stop dealing with the case and begin dealing with the individual. Make an end of legal formalism — reach the man. In addition to this record card, the proposed system requires two other factors — first, discretion in the examin- ing officer to dismiss frivolous cases and those not involving spite or intentional wrong on the part of the accused, and second, a probation officer under the control of the exam- ining officer for the purpose of investigating cases before 110 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ) trial and under the control of the court for supervising those placed under their care by the police magistrate. The trou- ble with the usual probation system is that it is not part and parcel of the police force, but separate from it and therefore an object of contempt and ridicule by the police.' Unless it is a recognized adjunct of the department, the man on the beat will never acquire the spirit of the probation officer, the very thing he ought to have, and which the whole program here outlined is intended to instill. As was pre- viously stressed, the man on the beat is the target for re- form, and whatever is done, if it does not educate him to conceive of his duties upon a higher plane of usefulness and service, very little headway will have been made. In order to insure this, probation officers must not only be con- sidered as the co-workers of the police, but in using the dis- cretionary powers vested in the man at the desk, the arrest- ing officer ought to know what has been done, and the rea- sons for doing it. The case ought not to be dismissed as frivolous or the occasion merely for admonition and warn- ing without such a course coming to the knowledge of the man who made the arrest. This system is the leaven, and the leaven belongs in the loaf and not separate from it. Some time ago there was a scarcity of labor in Atlanta. A great hue and cry was raised in the papers. Pressure was brought to bear on the police to enforce the ordinance forbidding idling and loitering. As a result Decatur Street was swept from start to finish and a great herd were driven into the station for vagrancy. They were slammed through the police court, fines were imposed by the wholesale, like the rain, falling on the just and the unjust. No record of employment was taken, no investigations were made. They were caught in the dragnet and shared the same fate. Negroes who had been working steadily were sent to the stockade. Their employers were not notified and had no opportunity to testify. One of the men caught was a white man named Jenkins. He had been in the city only three days — came here to find work, and intended as soon as located to write for his wife and four children to follow. Jenkins had been unemployed for a long time and looked MUNICIPAL AND MISDEMEANOR OFFENDERS 111 seedy enough, I grant you. If the proposed card system had been in vogue, the desk sergeant would have learned of his family, where they were, and how long he had been in the city. Jenkins should have been released without trial and re- ferred to the probation officer for a job. As it was, he was locked up and sent to the workhouse. It is not denied that an idle mind is the devil's workshop and vagrancy ought not to be tolerated. But a system which is blind to the causes of an individual's idleness is really manufacturing criminals out of those who may merely be unfortunate, the victims of sickness or disease, perhaps an unhappy home or drink. By producing a condition of utter despair in a man who already thinks he has lost out, the police court is committing a greater crime than the one sought to be punished. And the blotter will exhibit a more serious charge when he is returned for a second offense. It is the cause and motive which differentiates offenders and not the crime. Hard luck does not constitute an offense, and yet it may constitute a violation of a city ordinance. Take the case of the man who has lost his nerve through drink. What good does the workhouse do him? Or the man mentally incapacitated by worrying over a family dis- cord, or the man weakened by sickness or disease. The court ought to know of such conditions. When the examin- ing officer, with the help of a probation officer, is prepared to assist the court, means are at hand to meet each of these situations. Every one of these cases presents an opportu- nity for the probationary treatment. Take the matter of drunkenness. Let the probation officer, under the directions of the receiving officer, ascertain the cause of the man's in- temperance — whether due to conviviality, discouragement, illness or fatigue. Such a man ought not to be forced or sent to the workhouse. He needs the assistance of a friend. Very often it happens, however, that idling and loiter- ing and drunkenness are but the milder manifestations of criminal traits. For instance, there is one man in my town who has been arrested this year on eight separate charges. He continually violates the blind tiger ordinance, has re- peatedly been bound over for grave offenses, and is thor- 112 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH oughly depraved. What is best to be done in a case of that sort? My only suggestion is an ordinance giving the police court magistrate to double the term for every subsequent offense, without privilege of paying a fine. Not only does this record system .distinguish the sheep from the goats, it has further advantages. Its various items will bring light to bear on almost every phase of municipal control. Take, for example, the item giving the place where arrests were made. Suppose we, had a large enough map of the City of Nashville to block it out in detail. Every time an arrest was made in a dwelling a dot would denote the place. Keep this up for a year. You would find that the dots would mass around particular centers — ^which would show one of two things, either that the locality had not a sufficiently large detail of police, or that the police were inefficient. It might show that the neighborhood was insufficiently lighted. Scotland Yard sets value of a street light and a policeman at a ratio of one to eight, a proportion not over-estimated. Analysis may show that the residents of the neighborhood had no respectable means of recreation, the only diversions offered being the cheap dance hall, vau- deville, from which transition to the bar and nearby dive is very easy. In that event it clearly is up to the city to tear down the buildings and clean a space for a recreation center. Take Atlanta, for example: Hundreds of arrests are made in a very limited area in and around Decatur Street. The section mentioned in the negro playground. Saturday afternoon and night the colored population crowd the side- walks so as to render them almost impassable. There are thirty-seven negro beer saloons, there are four blood-and- thunder moving picture places, and twenty odd houses of ill-fame — all within five or six blocks. That is absolutely all the city offers the colored people by way of recreation. I dare say such conditions are the rule in other cities. On Collins Street, the police tell me it is as much as a man's life is worth to go through there at night. If an arc lamp is worth eight policemen, a well-supervised park is worth fifty. The United Cigar Stores choose locations for their INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND PROBATION SYSTEM 113 stores by counting the number of people passing a particu- lar site. A city ought to distribute its police according to the location of vice centers, arriving at this location by the number of arrests made in a given locality. Statistics thus gathered by the police may point out other needs in the city's administration. By making the man the case, recidivism can be checked, because his record card will bring to light underlying causes and the operation of the police magistrate's sentence upon that cause. If he comes back it may be concluded that the effect of this sentence was not beneficial. In that way re- form need not go groping about in darkness and suffer a setback because of a misstep. The facts will be on hand. Official statistics can be adduced to show the necessity for an inebriate farm, more playgrounds, a cure for those ad- dicted to the drug habit, greater discretionary power vested in the police magistrate, more manual train- ing in the schools, or an institution to confine the confirmed prostitute. The result of the system is knowledge. When that is attained reforms will plead their own cause, and the police who now glory in the terror they can inspire will learn to choose the better part, the redeemed manhood and womanhood of those they now terrorize. When that hap- pens the blue-coat will in verity be "the finest," a tower of strength, whose strength is spent to make others strong. THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND THE PROBATION SYSTEM. PROP. C. S. POTTS, M.A., LL.B. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT IN UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TEX. I. ITS HISTORY. The indeterminate sentence had its origin in this coun- try as a legal measure in an act passed by the Legislature of the State of New York in 1877, relating to the State Re- 114 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH formatory at Elmira. The plan embodied in the act was devised by Mr. Z. E. Brockway, who was the founder and for many years the superintendent of this reformatory. The unparalleled success attained by this reformatory through the original methods of training and discipline adopted there attracted wide attention both in this country and in Europe, and the indeterminate sentence came to be recognized as a powerful factor in effecting the reformation of the criminal. From New York the indeterminate sentence spread to a number of other States, and in one form or another it has now been incorporated into the jurisprudence of Colorado, North Dakota, Vermont, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Arizona, Washington, Wyoming, and probably several others. Foreign countries with their older systems and their established prejudices have been slow to adopt the indeterminate sentence, but during the International Prison Congress, held at Wash- ington in 1910, a committee composed of European dele- gates, after a visit to some of the leading prisons in this country where this form of sentence is in use, proposed reso- lutions favoring its adoption everywhere under proper re- strictions and limitations. The resolutions, after a notable debate, were adopted by the congress by a vote of three to one. Thus the old world learns from the new and places its stamp of approval upon this characteristic piece of Ameri- can legislation. II. THE EXISTING CODES BASED ON WRONG PRINCIPLE. The principle underlying the indeterminate sentence is very simple and easily understood when once we divest our- selves of the old idea that it is the business of the State to take vengeance upon the wrongdoer, to get even with him, to pay him back in his own coin, to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This old view of punishment was based upon the theory that the amount of guilt connected with each crime was a definite and ascertainable quantity, and that the penalty should be apportioned precisely accord- ing to the amount of guilt involved. So the various crimes INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND PROBATION SYSTEM 115 were catalogued according to the amount of guilt they were supposed to involve and over against each crime was set the penalty it was supposed to deserve. This is the plan upon which the penal codes are based; every offender to be punished, and the punishment to be graduated according to the offender's guilt. Now, it is precisely at this point that the old system fails and must always fail. It is absolutely impossible to determine with a fair approximation to accuracy the amount of guilt involved in the commission of any given crime. How often does ft happen that the thief steals twenty dol- lars only because he is unable to lay his hands upon a hun- dred, yet the one crime is punished as a misdemeanor and the other as a felony. Many an aggravated assault had as its motive the commission of murder or manslaughter. Practically every burglar goes prepared to take human life if need should arise, and is a murderer at heart. "To measure the guilt of any person convicted of crime pre- sents a problem, complex and hopelessly insoluble," says an eminent writer on penology. "What human intelligence can estimate how far the act of the prisoner was effected by vicious heredity, by defective education, by constitutional weakness of mind or of character, by misapprehension or mistake of facts, by long accumulated provocation, by sud- den overwhelming passion, or by cherished intention. These are but a few of the essential elements of guilt, unknown to the judge and unfathomable. How can judges, widely differing in temperament and sagacity, administer the codes with any approach to consistency or equality? "There is no possible standards by which either Legis- latures or judges can measure the relative gravity of dif- ferent crimes or declare that the commission of one certain crime involves greater guiltiness than the commission of a certain other crime. Notwithstanding the centuries dur- ing which the common law has aided in the harmonizing of the penal codes, there is absolutely no concensus of opinion about the relative enormity of the most common crimes nor about the proper punishment of any single crime. Convincing evidence in support of this statement 116 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH is found in a comparison of the penal codes of the various States of the Union. "Take the crime of incest ; the highest punishment pro- vided for this crime by the code of Virginia is imprison- ment for six months; by the code of Kentucky (an adjoin- ing State), imprisonment for twenty-one years. "For bigamy, the highest punishment in Delaware is six years' imprisonment and a fine of $2,000; in Tennessee, twenty-one years' imprisonment. "For grand larceny, imprisonment for two years in Louisiana and for twenty years in Connecticut. "For perjury, five years in Connecticut, twenty years in New York, imprisonment for life in Maine, death in Missouri, and imprisonment for ten years, with a fine of $500 to $2,000 and whipping with forty lashes, in Delaware. "These are instances showing the wide diversity of judgment and of legislation about the proper punishment for the same crime, and the same diversity is found through the whole catalogue of the codes. But when we come to examine the codes of the several States fixing the compara- tive gravity of different crimes, the result is even more startling. "The guilt of burglary in Connecticut is twice that of arson, but in Pennsylvania the guilt of arson is twice that of burglary. So, the guilt of forgery in Kansas is four times that of larceny, while in Connecticut the guilt of larceny is four times that of forgery. "The guilt of counterfeiting in Ohio and Minnesota is twice that of perjury, but in Rhode Island and Alabama the guilt of perjury is twice that of counterfeiting." These examples are sufficient to show that utter failure and hopeless confusion have resulted from our age-lone: attempt to measure the amount of guilt connected with each crime and to apportion the punishment to the guilt. If fur- ther evidence were needed it would only be necessary to point to the fact that when Blackstone wrote his com- mentaries at the time of the American Revolution, not fewer than one hundred and sixty crimes were deemed worthy of instant death, some of which, by our changing and un- INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND PROBATION SYSTEM 117 certain means of estimating guilt, are now only regarded as misdemeanors and are punishable by fine only. III.' THE PRINCIPLE OF THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE. Now, the indeterminate sentence brushes aside this idle attempt to measure the amount of the guilt. It sets before the judge and the jury the far simpler task of determining the guilt of the accused, but not the amount of his guilt. If the evidence shows that it is dangerous to society for him to be at large, he is found guilty and is restrained. If he should be restrained at all, he should be restrained until he is no longer dangerous. His position is closely analo- gous to that of the insane person. We lock up the madman to prevent him from injuring others, and to cure him of his malady if it should prove to be curable. If his case proves a hopeless one the restraint is continued until death relieves the State of the burden of his support. In much the same way the criminal may be regarded as a ward of the State too dangerous to be at large. He should be assigned to the care of trained prison officers, skilled in the treatment of moral perverts, and should be kept there until he has given good cause to believe that if given another chance he will live a decent life. Under the old system we strike a rough estimate of the guilt of the pris- oner at the bar and give him a definite sentence. At the end of that term we turn him loose without ever stopping to inquire whether or not he is still dangerous to society. As well might we cage a man-eating tiger for a year and then turn him loose more bloodthirsty than before. Under the new system the judge and jury are relieved of the difficult task of saying how long the accused should be confined. They simply find that his conduct proves him to be so dangerous to society that he should be restrained. It is for those who have him in charge and under constant observation and instruction to say when the period of re- straint should end, and in no case should it end until he has given reasonable ground to believe that he can now be given his liberty without danger to society. 118 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH IV. OBJECTIONS TO THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE. "But," says one, "such a system is unjust. A man who has committed some heinous crime may secure his release after a few months of confinement, while another might be held many years or even for life for some petty offense." It is true such a thing might happen. But why should the one still be confined when he has given satisfactory evidence that he is now ready to lead the life of an honorable citizen ? Or why should the other be released upon society when he has shown no disposition to lead a different life from that he lead before his incarceration ? If he was dangerous then, he is dangerous now, and should be restrained. The char- acter of the crime committed is a matter of small concern so far as the length of confinement is concerned. No person dangerous to society should be allowed to run at large, and no person should be restrained when he has given reasonable evidence that he is ready to lead an honorable life. There is another objection which is usually raised and which constitutes the stronghold of the opposition to the system of rational imprisonment. "How can the indetermi- nate sentence be made determinate? Where is the wisdom, the knowledge of hearts, the power to read character, the insight into motive, sincerity, strength of will, the eye to pierce all disguises, to detect hypocrisy, to recognize man- liness, to distinguish conscience and honest purpose from pretense and cunning? I confess that the decision when to terminate the sentence in each individual case is one of the most difficult which can be imposed upon the human mind. To make it always without error is not in the power of any man or body of men. The reformatory methods with crimi- nals will never be administered without errors, and such errors must work hardships. . . . The force of the ob- jection must be admitted without reserve. It is a fearful necessity that is thrown upon the State to exercise such a prerogative through fallible agents." "But," says the late Mr. Charlton Lewis, an eminent law- yer and penologist of New York City, "it cannot be too emphatically asserted that the objection is not to the inde- INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND PROBATION SYSTEM 119 terminate sentence as a method, but to every method of restraining criminals. If imprisonment must be practiced, somebody must be vested vi^ith the power to decide who shall be imprisoned and how long. Assuming the necessity of the retraint, human minds capable of error must assign and administer it. Observe, then, that the objection in question applies with a thousandfold more force to the traditional system of retribution than to the scientific system of refor- mation. If students of humanity trained in the work of searching the character, stimulating the better motives, and watching for the growth of responsibility and conscience, who are in daily, hourly intercourse with their wards for the sole purpose of preparing them to be free, may be de- ceived in them, what shall we say of the judge or the jury who sees the prisoner for an hour or a day at the bar, and whose knowledge of him is carefully limited to the single act of which he is accused ? The more familiar we are with the practical work of penal jurisprudence the more irresist- ibly shall we conclude that, while the difficulty of fair and effective administration will always be felt under any sys- tem of law, that difficulty amounts to utter impossibility under the current system of retribution, and is infinitely diminished under the reformatory plan. Thus the objection so often urged against the indeterminate sentence and its corollaries, becomes, when candidly examined, an unanswer- able plea for its adoption." V. BENEFICENT RESULTS. As stated in the beginning the indeterminate sentence is not a novel or untried plan. It is in use in many States of the Union, and everywhere it is bringing about desirable results, if we may judge from the opinions of the prison officials who are actually carrying the law into practice. I have a score or more of letters from the leading prison wardens in this country, from New York to California, and there is not a dissenting voice among them. All of them, vdthout a single exception, approve the results, and many of them would make it applicable to practically all classes 129 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of crimes, and to all but the incorrigible class of criminals. But the results obtained will always depend upon the appli- cation of intelligent reformatory measures, such as intel- lectual and moral instruction and training in the crafts and trades. No prisoner should ever be released until he has learned some occupation by which he can earn an honest living, and the prison management should find employment for him and turn him over directly into the hands of a responsible employer. With such a system the indetermi- nate sentence becomes one of the most effective instruments making for the reformation of the convict, VI. PEOBATION AS A SUBSTITUTE FOE IMPRISONMENT. While practical prison workers agree that if imprison- ment becomes necessary, the term should be indefinite in duration, they have lost faith to a very large extent in imprisonment as a means of reforming criminals. Especial- ly is this true of jail sentences and of short terms of im- prisonment, when applied to young persons and first offend- ers. Such short terms of imprisonment rob the prisoner of the last remnant of his self-respect and send him out into the world stigmatized as a "jail bird." In the congre- gate jails and prisons, too, the youthful offender comes un- der the influence of hardened criminals, and as a conse- quence he makes more progress in crime as a result of a week's imprisonment than he would make in a month or possibly a year on the outside. As a substitute for imprisonment some States have adopted a form of probation or suspended sentence, bv which the accused, if a first offender, is placed under the supervision of a probation officer and is allowed to go free upon condition that he repair the wrong he has done, sup- port his family and otherwise maintain good conduct. In this way, says Professor Henderson, "an offender may be reformed or prevented from becoming a habitual criminal by personal influence and help, without losing time from employment, without being cut off from family and friends, and without incurring the reputation of a 'jail bird.' " INDETERMINATE SENTENCE AND PROBATION SYSTEM 121 A few examples will show the workings of the system of reparation and probation. A young man in central New York who had never before been arrested, stole a cow, which he later sold and which could not be recovered. Neither imprisonment nor a fine would have repaid the original owner of the cow for his loss. The court, however, placed the man on probation under an order that he pay the full value of the cow to its original owner in install- ments. Another case: "In 1901 a probation officer received a twenty-six-year-old man on probation, who had already served a sentence for burglary and who was at the time under conviction for grand larceny. The man was a loafer and a drunkard, and so depraved that his wife could not live with him. Owing to his record the District Attorney and others who knew the defendant scouted the possibility of his reformation and urged the court to impose a heavy sentence, but, since the court felt that there was something still left in the man to build upon, it placed him on proba- tion. The probation officer secured work for the man, and by persistent efforts brought about a reunion with his family and developed an ambition to do right. For upwards of seven years the man has been working faithfully and is a respected citizen." One other case may be given. "A man who had stolen a load of whiskey valued at $216 was placed on probation upon the condition that he refund its full value. He had become drunk after stealing the whiskey, and in turn the whiskey was stolen from him, which he was unable to re- cover. While on probation the man kept at work and made weekly payments from his earnings during a period of two years, until the original owner of the property was compensated for his loss. Had the defendant been com- mitted to an institution for the theft he might have fallen into associations which would lead him to continue in crime, and the owner of the property would not have been com- pensated for his loss." The foregoing cases are taken from the records in the State of New York, where excellent results are being ob- 122 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH tained by the application of the suspended sentence. But it should be remembered that the system is yet in its infancy, and it should be applied with great care. It will probably prove useless unless coupled with a system of trained proba- tion officers who can look after the released men, fined em- ployment for them, see that they maintain good conduct and perform the obligations laid upon them by the court. Under proper conditions there can be no doubt that the sus- pended sentence, or probation system, will prove a most humane and salutatory measure for saving young men from lives of crime and degradation. THE OBJECT OF IMPRISONMENT. REV. F. EMORY LYON, Ps.D., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE CENTRAL HOWARD ASSOCIATION. A century and a quarter of prison improvement has shown us that imprisonment is not an end in itself. To put a man out of sight, and then out of mind, does not solve his problem nor the problem of society. Still less does it benefit society to commit him thoughtlessly to indifferent, or brutal custody, without reference to his relation to society in the future. More and more we are finding that society will be saved from the depredations of delinquents only in so far as it seeks to save its enemy — the criminal. Therefore, we are asking the object of imprisonment, and the answer is coming back — not punishment, not custody merely, not even discipline alone, but training, education in trades and use- fulness for the future. It is because many other institu- tions of society, such as the home, the school and the Church have not done their full duty that some of their functions must be performed for the man behind the bars. Not that this will solve the whole problem. The work is only begun when the man is released from prison, either under parole or discharge. The critical question is as to THE OBJECT OF IMPRISONMENT 123 how he shall be treated after release. Everything depends upon whether he shall become a good citizen by wholesome, industrial and social connection with the rest of humanity. To solve this part of the problem many of the States have adopted the parole law in order that the first offender may have an incentive for the future and may have prompt em- ployment after his release. But a job is not the only thing needed by the discarded, discouraged, disappointed man who faces his fellows longing for sympathy. It is therefore essential that there should be widespread, personal, practical, brotherly interest in the man who seeks to take up again the broken threads of life. To this end the need of systematic prisoners' aid work is becoming more and more apparent. The movement in this direction is increasing and has become more widespread than ever in the last decade. There are in the United States and Canada about thirty prisoners' aid societies. These organizations each year assist in the neighborhood of 10,000 men from various prisons, reformatories and city workhouses. This number is less than one-third of those who are released from year to year from the State institutions, not to speak of the larger number from various institutions for petty offenses. The experience of these associations have been most gratifying as to results. Figures are given to show that from 70 to 80 per cent of those aided in a pracitcal way have responded satisfactorily. It may be assumed that a certain portion of these applicants would manage to make their way to permanent restoration without any assistance. A considerable part, however, would undoubtedly revert to crime if left to their own efforts, resources and powers of resistance and persistence. The experience of the Central Howard Association, which I represent, is doubtless typical of other organizations in this field. Men of all degrees of development, and of discouragement, appeal to us for aid. Nevertheless we are able to find in each something of the elements of manhood upon which we may build. Applicants come to us from all the States in the Union, and from the various nationalities. 124 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH It is our belief that by far the great majority of all prison- ers desire to turn away from crime at the time of their release. It is usually only after meeting with a series of rebuffs and discouragement that crime is again resorted to. As a matter of fact, an eminent judge has recently expressed his belief that no sane man will persistently return to crime. Our experience would further indicate that few of those who find their way to prison do so wholly or solely because of their own perversity or by their own responsibility alone. In many cases some other individual should share the re- sponsibility, and in most cases society as a whole should realize that it has surrounded the individual with the ele- ments and institutions that have in a large measure con- tributed to his delinquency. In any case, when a man has paid the penalty of his crime and desires to do right, then it is "up to" society to give him the opportunity to carry out that purpose. This is precisely what the various prisoners' aid societies, such as the Central Howard Asso- ciation, are endeavoring to do day by day. The field is wide, the need is great, the importance of cooperation on the part of officials, employers and social service workers and all good citizens is apparent. No man should leave the prison gate without a friend, adviser and counsellor, and in most cases some practical assistance is imperative. In this direction, iT any, we may demonstrate our actual belief in the Brotherhood of Man. FUNDAMENTAL INEQUALITIES OF ADMINISTRA- TION OF LAWS. HON. WILLIAM H. SAMFORD, MONTGOMERY, ALA. The administration or, I might say, the lack of correct enforcement of the criminal law has been, is, and doubtless for a long time to come will continue to be, the source of INEQUALITIES OF ADMINISTRATION OF LAWS 125 much serious concern to those whose ideals rise above the level of "what we shall eat, what we shall drink and where- withal we shall be clothed." Little, if any, fault can be found with the criminal stat- utes of the various States prohibiting every known immor- ality and even undertaking to repress by legislative enact- ments those evils not involving moral turpitude, which are supposed to be detrimental to society and to higher morals. Courts and legal machinery have been provided for the enforcement of these laws with such seeming perfection that the wisest lawyers can rarely put their finger on the defect or point out the reason for the ineffectiveness of the system. Yet crimes of the higher degree continue to an alarming extent, and an attempt to enforce an excise law, regularly enacted by the representatives of the people, when opposed by even a considerable minority, meets with serious opposition, and usually is openly violated under the eyes of the officers charged with its enforcement. Having been an active practitioner of the criminal law, both as a public prosecutor for many years, and for the defense, I naturally have some ideas as to the cause of the conditions now existing in the southern section of this Union, extending, so far as I can learn, throughout the entire South. As a premise to what I shall say, for the benefit of those who may not be informed as to the real population of the South, it may be well to state that we have with us three distinctive communities : First, where the population is composed largely of negroes, sometimes in the ratio of as many as ten to one. Second, where the population is largely white, usually at a ratio of about two to one. Third, where the population is almost entirely white. All of these communities co-exist in the States of the Union formerly known as slave States, and my observation extends in a more or less degree to all three communities. In the first of these, in the administration of the criminal 126 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH law, the negro usually gets even and exact justice, some- times tempered with mercy. The average white man who serves on the juries in these counties, in his cooler mo- ments and untouched by racial influences, is a believer in fair play, and for the most part is the descendant of the men who builded the foundations of our States. But, in these communities, a white man rarely, if ever, gets a fair and an impartial trial, and, if indeed he is in- dicted by a grand jury, his conviction or acquittal is deter- mined more upon his family connections, his business stand- ing or his local political influence than upon the evidence in the case as applied to the law. This, therefore, under these conditions, presents an un- equal enforcement of law upon citizens of the same com- munity, where all men are supposed to be equal under the law, giving to the one class a license for lawlessness and inspiring in the other a resentment which often breaks out in open violence. In the second of these communities the law is more nearly enforced as to both classes, and except in cases where the rights of the one are opposed to those of the other, convictions may be had, and indeed are often had, against the members of both races for offenses of the more serious nature. In the third of these communities the white man usually gets a fair trial and is usually acquitted or convicted accord- ing to the evidence under the law, while the negro, the member of an opposite race, has scant consideration before a jury composed entirely of white men, and is given the severest punishments for the most trivial offenses. These conditions exist as to the jury trials, where the administration of the law is practically in the hands of the masses of the people. But in addition to these classes, justice is often thwarted, penalties imposed for crime delayed, and criminals go un- whipped of justice on account of an uncertain condition of the law of criminal procedure. The cause of this, to my mind, is fundamental rather than artificial, and therefore much of the criticism is unde- served and inconsiderate. INEQUALITIES OP ADMINISTRATION OF LAWS 127 Egypt, during the time of her world power, had made great strides in the enforcement of her laws. When Greece was the center of learning and the domi- nant power of the world, the sentences of the criminal courts were often executed by the convicts themselves. Later, when Rome rose to power, respect for Roman law was a part of the patriotism of every Roman citizen. England today has the most perfect system of criminal jurisprudence in the world, as applied to England, and the percentage of crimes and convictions is an evidence both as to its effectiveness and as to its application to the re- quirements of England. A crime committed in England is at once turned over to the prosecuting officer, by him referred to Scotland Yard, if at all mysterious or uncertain, the facts gathered, the defendant is brought to trial, and with dignified rapidity he is tried under well-defined rules of law, guaranteeing his rights, and, if found guilty, he has his right of review by a higher court, where his case is decided speedily by men learned in a system of laws whose well-defined paths lead back through six hundred years of decisions rendered by English judges. At the time of the greatest perfection in Egyptian civili- zation, and at the time of the best enforcement of her laws, the entire population was of one race, and the advent of the Hebrew was the beginning of her decay, caused, doubt- less, by the introduction of a different race over which the Egyptian could dominate. When Greece was at her best no mixed blood was there, her laws were all Grecian, and it was only when the hordes of southern Asia swept over Greece that disrespect and dis- regard for her laws began to be noticed and Greece began to decay. Rome in her best years was of one race and one blood, her laws and her ideals were Roman. England, since the advent of William the Conqueror, is of one race, with a racial purity which extends into litera- ture, arts, business and government. The laws are made by Englishmen of the pure blood, to apply to Englishmen of 128 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the pure blood, and to be administered by Englishmen of the pure blood, all of which, both as to legislation and exe- cution, are in accord with precedent that has become a part if the English people. This present comparative perfection is the result of centuries of evolution in nation-building, and this degree of perfection is only apparent when applied to the Englishman in England. A little more than a hun- dred years ago an effort to extend these same laws and same customs over thirteen colonies with a population from many climes, evolved revolution rather than order. These United States are in the throes of the birth of a nation. With a citizenship composed of those whose busi- ness, social and religious interests are closely allied, but whose racial ancestry reaches back through the generations to every type of man on the globe. And in our section this condition is more apparent and the types more distinct than in any other part of the entire Union, the racial psychology of whom prevents the one from a clear understanding of the motives and aims of the other. Given the same end in government to attain, each would attempt it from a different angle; given the same state- ment of facts as to a criminal case, and each would reach a different result. No white man fully understands the psychology of the African, and no African fully comprehend the psychology of the white man. Sherlock Holmes was possible in England. He would be absolutely impossible in Montgomery, Alabama. With the people who came to the South to make up its citizenship, came the racial interpretation of law. For I would have you know that some of the proudest blood of all the South comes from France and Spain, as well as from England, and with this blood came ideas of justice as declared by the Code Napoleon, and now and then, where our judges have a distinctive Spanish strain, the rules of the Inquisition are felt in the administration of our laws. These various influences, all seeking justice and right, have the effect of making the law uncertain, delaying jus- tice, subjecting the courts to serious criticism, and creating a distrust, and I may say, in many instances a disgust of THE PRISONER'S SIDE 129 the law seriously interfering with its proper enforcement. And when, in addition to this, the law made by the repre- sentatives of one race must of necessity be attempted to be enforced upon another where it can only repress, it adds to the existing difficulties of a problem, serious at all times, and renders a satisfactory solution in the near future almost impossible. When all these things are considered, it must be seen that the peoples of this country, through the processes of evolution, must be brought into an homogeneous mass, born into a new nation whose ideals, business sentiments, art and literature will be racial before we can hope for distinctive ideals that will" be altogether American. THE PRISONER'S SIDE.* LOUIS J. BERNHARDT, SECRETARY GEORGIA STATE PRISON ASSOCIATION, ATLANTA, GA. You have heard a great deal, as our Chairman has al- ready stated, from the other side ; much has been said along the line of what ought to be done in our prisons. I think at this time we should consider what we are really doing in our prisons and what they are accomplishing at the present time. It has already been stated that our prisons are in force for three purposes : to deter, to protect, and to benefit the indi- vidual. All I can say along this line is to awake each and every one of you individuals, for I think it is your duty as citi- zens of this country to Understand conditions as they really are. It is all right for a professor of sociology to tell you about what conditions ought to be, and to go into detail and tell you just what really could be accomplished. But what of the prisoner now? I think it is your duty as citizens * Published from stenographic notes. 130 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH to familiarize yourselves with conditions as they are; to meet the man that comes out of prison, and to see his con- dition. In other words, to come to a thorough understand- ing of what prison conditions really are. Then there is another thought we ought to take into consideration. A great deal has been said about the crimi- nal and why we put him in prison. Very little has been said about how much we, as members of society, are re- sponsible for conditions which manufacture criminals, about the peculiar social conditions that led up to the commission of the crime, and why the man committed that crime. Now, these are things that every man and woman ought to know about. I am here to speak on the prisoner's side, and I am going to speak from the prisoner's standpoint. When I look back upon the dark past of my own experience and see where I might have been helped, what it would have meant to me at the crucial moment of my life, then it is that I must bring this information to a Congress of this kind; because, if conditions are really to be changed for the better, the people must be informed of conditions as they really are. Twenty-two years of my life were spent in the various prisons of this country. As a young man I made a mistake and, as a result of that mistalce, I had to go to prison. I stand here in your presence this morning and state without any spirit of malice or vindictiveness that in my after years I was a creature of prison conditions. What I became in after years as a criminal, prison conditions were respon- sible for ; not because I was a criminal at heart nor because I needed any of the returns of the criminal life to meet any of the material needs of my life. Let us stop for a moment and ask ourselves the question, what effect has prison life upon a man? Look at the county jail, go here to your own at Nashville and inves- tigate. What effect does it have upon the physical man? We have all kinds of sanitary commissions going about enforcing sanitary laws, and when they find the owner of a house or property that is not living up to the commands of the law, he is fined and brought before the court and THE PRISONER'S SIDE 131 sent to prison because he does not obey the law. Yet we still force men into our jails and prisons, where unsanitary conditions are worse than in any private property. Our average county jail is a cesspool of vermin, filth and disease. What effect does that have upon the physical man? Then take the man who has committed a crime, his first offense perhaps — what is the condition ? There he is forced into an environment where he comes in contact with all types of criminals and crime. In other words, we force a man into an environment which will in turn make a crimi- nal of him. Then we go to our prisons from our county jails. What do we see ? First, there is the garb of dishonor, the stripes. In many of our States they have got the shackle, and in every one of our Southern States they have the lash, and I ask you what effect does that have upon the moral make-up of a man? Does it have any tendency to bring out the moral qualities of a man to lead a man up into the better walks of life? These conditions exist. As I stated a mo- ment ago, it is your duty as citizens to examine into these conditions. We claim to send men under ordinary circumstances to prison to reform them. Go into the average convict camp or into our average Southern prison. What do we find ? We find in each of these institutions in the form of guards, keep- ers, foreman and other officers, men who are nine times out of ten worse criminals than the men they have under their charge. Ladies and gentlemen, although I speak as an ex-prisoner, I say these things without fear of contradic- tion, and I beg you to examine the conditions. What mora] effect does that have upon the average prisoner? Here is a man who has committed a crime, acknowledges his guilt and goes to prison. There he comes in contact with these men, and in many instances it is very plain and very notice- able to him as a criminal; he sees the real facts. Let me illustrate. During one of my prison experiences in Georgia I was filling the position of bookkeeper at one of the mines. There was a large framed notice up in that same house where I was at work containing the rules for the govern- 132 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ment of the prison officials and employes, and among other things it said it should be considered a felony for any official employe or State official to receive any compensation from the lessees of the State prison, punishable by imprison- ment from one to five years. Among the items in my book- keeping was $150 a month from the lessees to the warden of the camp and another item of $100 a month to the physician of the camp. In other words, here were the officials committing a felony just as regularly as the month rolled around. The point is, what eifect did that have upon me as a criminal? Now these are conditions. Then there is another thought. Do you know that the average State in the United States of America is robbing its convicts? Not only robbing its convicts, but robbing the innocent wives and dependent children of the convicts. Go out here into the State peni- tentiary of Tennessee — I will use this as an illustration — they have got a foundry, a saddlery shop, hosiery mills, shoe shop and several other things. What is the earning capacity of each man there? What does the ordinary harnessmaker make out in your city? For the sake of argument, at the very smallest amount, we will say, $1.50 per day. I know it is larger. What does it cost the State of Tennessee to keep that man? Not over 50 cents a day; in many instances a smaller amount. Then, if that be true, who is entitled to the other dollar? Has the State of Tennessee or any other State a right — even if a man has committed a crime — have they got a right to rob the innocent wives and children of the man for the sake of making a few men rich at the expense of fallen humanity? Go down there into my own native State of Georgia ; how many millionaires have been created through convict labor ? Come into Tennessee; how many millionaires have been created by the convict labor? Go back on the mountain side into those little huts and see the other side of the picture. Come down into my own native State of Georgia and there see the poor unfortunate wives and little ones starving for the necessities of life that a few of these blood-suckers might flourish in luxury. Have we the right to do it? I leave that for you to determine. THE PRISONER'S SIDE 133 I want to say relative to myself, there came a time in my own life when I came face to face with my sin and my Maker, and through the power and the mercy of God I am what I am. I deserve no credit. The various penal systems of this country tried for thirty years to make a man of me and they failed. I tried for thirty years myself and I failed. But when I came face to face with the gospel of Jesus Christ then it was that I became what I am. Judging from my own personal experience, what we need in the penitentiary systems of America today is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And when I say the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I don't mean to get up on a platform and preach, and sing and pray. There are many ways of carrying the gospel of Jesus Christ besides preaching. We can carry the gospel of Jesus Christ in the form of human favors. Give an opportunity for education for those who have been deprived of that opportunity. We can carry the gospel of Jesus Christ in the form of serviceable labor that will prepare that man to earn his own living when he comes out of prison. And, last of all, we can carry the gospel of Jesus Christ into our State Legislature, that they may make some provision for a man after he pays the penalty of his crime, so that he may not be forced back into a life of crime when he meets the world again. There are very few States that make any provision for the prisoner at all, and those that do make no provision that is adequate. I come to you as a man who has seen life in all of its phases, and I come to you this morning on behalf of the man who has paid the penalty of his crime. I am not here to condone any man's crime ; I am not here to say we should not have prisons, because we ought to have them; but I am here to say that if society must confine its derelicts, then they should be surrounded while they are there with an environment that will give them an oppor- tunity to be men when they are released. You, possibly, as hundreds of others have said, picking out some individual, there is a man that has no foundation to build upon; what are you going to do with him? To such an one let me say this ; is that man responsible for his 134 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH birth? Is he responsible for the hereditary influences of his life ; for the environments in which he has been reared until he attains the age of understanding? If society has not performed its duty to him, or, in other words, if society has not furnished an environment which would have proved a foundation for that man to build upon, then when he has commited an act which sends him into our prisons, it is our duty while he is there to surround him with an en- vironment which will be a foundation toward manhood. What of the man coming out of prison? Prison life is hard enough, God knows it is ; but if there is a greater hell on the face of the earth than a prison, it is when a man is discharged from the average prison. What can he do? He is honest. It may be impossible for him to convince you of that fact; but deep down in his heart he knows it. He goes to a man who employs labor, and says, "Sir, will you give me a job?" He says, "Where did you work the last time?" He says, "Just out of prison." "Well, I don't want you." He meets that same reception several times a day; then the police begin to say, "I guess you had better move on." What can he do' I appeal to you as a man who through the power and the mercy of God has gone through this terrible experience. I bring to you six years of honest effort toward manhood as a pawn for men of my kind. Will you, in the name of God, only give them a chance? By the Chairman: I am sure there are a great many questions and suggestions as to how we can get at some practical way of applying the golden rule. That is the work before us. We haven't any time for discussion now unless the audience imperatively demands it, but I want to say at the conference this afternoon the subject will be discussed further. AN OBSERVATION 135 AN OBSERVATION.* DR. GRAHAM TAYLOR. I have listened with very great interest to Mr. Bern- hardt's remarks, because I think they combine both objects from the sociological points of view, and I wish to confirm what he has said by what I have seen in the Nebraska State penitentiary immediately following that series of tragedies which shocked not only that State but all the United States. Eight men have been killed by violence in that prison and about that prison within forty-eight days; four of them were deputy wardens and guards, three of them were con- victs, and one was an innocent farmer who had been com- pelled at the point of a revolver to try to help these men make their escape. One man was killed, one warden, by a prisoner who alleges that he turned the fire hose on him, and he swore while he was suffering that indignity and penalty that he would kill that man if he got out of his cell, and he did. Three men blew their way out of that prison by nitroglycerine caps and shot everybody that stood in their way, including the warden of the prison himself, and got away for three days, and then in making their final escape in the farmer's wagon, two of these men were killed and the farmer. Then the day before I arrived in Lincoln, one prisoner reached over and took another prisoner by the head who stood in front of him in the dining-room, and nearly cut his head off in the presence of 400 men. When asked why he did it, he said, "Search him and you will find the knife with which he was going to kill me." Now, there were eight lives sacrificed to the most atrocious lack of discipline and violations of the rules of humanity that I have ever seen, and that is saying a good deal. Who is at fault? In the first place, there is no civil service. Just what that man said about guards is true * notes. This impromptu talk of Dr. Taylor is published from stenographic 136 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH there. I went to the man who escaped and was brought back. I said, "Morley, what did you do that awful thing for?" "Well," he said, "I don't ask the rights of a man. I ask only a prisoner's rights." "Well, what are a pris- oner's rights," I asked, as he got up from the dark cell where he lay like a dog. He answered, "To know what the rules are and have them squarely kept. But what is a man to do when he obeys the rule under one man and succeeds and obeys the rules under another man and is punished?" Then he said, "We had such food we couldn't stand it." Testimony has been given that actually the legs and tails of rats were picked out of the hash by the prisoners in the morning. The guards were intemperate, profane, illiterate and absolutely ignorant. The warden, who is dead, I sup- pose I should say nothing about. Let it pass in silence, but that record will never bear examination. What happened after that warden was killed? The Governor of that State appointed a man who had never scarcely been inside of a prison, a livery stable keeper, who had absolutely no idea of the art of maintaining discipline and administering re- formatory measures. Well, after the Governor, who is at fault? Exactly, as was said, the Legislature. What are the salaries of these men, these guards? Twenty-five dol- lars a month for outside guards and $35 a month for the inside guards. What kind of men can you get for that sort of wage ? What was the deputy paid ? Seventy-five dollars a month. And the warden? Twelve hundred and fifty dollars a year. How can you get men capable of filling such positions for such wages? Yet all these facts were brought out at the investigation in the City of Lincoln, when it was shown that there was a regular dope trade in cocaine and in morphine at the prison. Why, the judge of the juvenile court and a number of men went with an ex-convict to the prison gate at 8 o'clock one evening. At the moment that discharged con- vict said there would be a trusty inside to come to the gate, that trusty appeared and a bottle of morphine was handed in in the sight of the judge of the juvenile court, and out AN OBSERVATION 137 came the pay for the morphine in two new-made prison brooms, one of which the judge bought of the ex-convict and kept it as a trophy of the transaction and also to prove the charge made. The inside man said to the outside man, "Where is the whiskey?" "Oh," he said, "I will bring that tomorrow." Now, that trade went on. That wasn't the worst trade. The man in charge of the apothecary shop was a man who had killed two people by compounding pre- scriptions. He had full range of the apothecary shop; he seemed to boss the prison; he had the choice of the young convicts, and the most despicable sexual debauchery has been practiced on the young convicts by the older men locked up in the same cell. Why, I found two men in a cell five feet wide, seven feet high and eight feet long, with no ventilation except what came in from the front door. Now, I want to know if that is civilization? Why, it is an inferno. And yet here we have communities of Chris- tians that are not Christian communities. Here we have a great preponderance of Christian communities absolutely unmaking and unmanning men in an institution supported by their system of taxation. Now, if there could be a more horrible condition, a more self-stultifying, obliquitous con- dition, I can't imagine it. No reformatory, mind you, be- tween the reform school and State prison; but boys from 18 to 25 years of age, first offenders, mingled right in with the old offenders. I went in the. city lockup and found the same thing there. It was a bull-pen, a small room in which seventy-two men, the Chief of Police told me, were crowded on some occasions. No discrimination ; no chance for segre- gation. Now, those conditions in a lesser degree prevail all over the United States. The jails are seeding-down places for crime. When a poor victim becomes what his surround- ings force him to be, then society, with as much conscience as religion, puts the penalty of the law upon him. If any- thing on God's earth should touch the quick of the con- science of any people claiming to be free Americans, or Christians, it is these unvarnished but awfully sharp and hard facts which this session of this Congress is hearing. IV. PUBLIC HEALTH Diseases of the Social Organism Sociological Importance of Vital Statistics Mental Defectives and the Insane The Care of the Degenerate The Sociological Aspect of the Tuberculosis Problem Insurance Nursing National Deterioration by Neglect of Public Health DISEASES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. W. S. RANKIN, M.D., SECRETARY STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, RALEIGH, N. C. Sir Thomas Browne, having in mind the constitution of the human body, said : "We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labor at in a divided piece and in less volume." Herbert Spencer, quite familiar with the compendium, looked upon the volume of humanity, saw in its constituent units and activities the analogue of the struc- ture and functions of the human body, and gave to society the term "social organism." In the one he saw the cell as the unit of structure, in the other the individual ; in the body he recognized those groups of cells that form the or- gans, iil society those groups of individuals who compose our industrial classes ; in the body he saw systems of organs, in society systems of industry ; in both he saw the units, the groups and systems mutually dependent, bound together for common weal or woe. In the nationality of cells and in the nationality of men it is equally and fundamentally true that "we rise or fall together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free." CLASSIFICATION OP DISEASES. In both the cellular and the social organism there are four classes of diseases, distinctive in their distribution and cause: Cellular and individual disease, local and municipal disease, organic and occupational disease, and systemic and national disease. Cellular and Individual Diseases. — There is an individ- uality of disease. Both cells and individuals, the units, vary in their amount of vitality, in their response to the wear and tear of life, in their reaction to bacteria and their toxins, and in their ability to withstand the effects of faulty metabolism. So it is that a cell or an individual may sicken and die as a result of individual characteristics and leave 142 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH their neighbor and offspring physically unaffected. Such a disease is individual in both cause and distribution. Local and Municipal Disease. — A community of cells or individuals often have, usually have, certain conditions in common by w^hich disease may enter. An injury to a part of the body, a naturally weak blood supply to a particular part, or an injury to a local nerve may constitute distinctive- ly local conditions through which local disease may origi- nate. In the same way, a calamity to a town or city in the form of flood or fire, a polluted water supply, bad sewerage, contagion through the common utilities, postoffice, schools, churches etc., may result in a distinctively local disease of the social organism, to which the term "municipal disease" is appropriate. So it is that two neighboring towns or cities, living under identical general conditions such as climate, soil, etc., may have very different general and spe- cial death rates. As one star differeth from another star in glory, so municipalities differ from one another in sani- tary wisdom and administration. Organic and Occupational Diseases. — Inasmuch as the different organs of our body are subject to special physio- logical laws, the groups of cells composing any particular organ exist under distinctive conditions. Therefore, any condition, inherited or acquired, which interferes with the operation of these distinctively organic laws, will produce organic disease in the organ involved. Likewise, those or- gans, groups of individuals, of the social organism, lying under conditions distinctive to themselves, become subject to occupational diseases. Industries that have a selective pathological action on women and children, placing a man's burden on the former and an adult's burden on the latter, produce organic disease in the social organism. Other in- dustries that subject the workers to dust-laden air, poison- ous fumes and gases and other disease-producing influences are productive of organic diseases of the social organism or occupational diseases. Systemic and National Disease. — In the cellular organ- ism there are two systems — the nutritive or circulatory and the governing or nervous system — through which a patho- DISEASES OF TKe SOCIAL ORGANISM 143 logical influence may find its way to every cell of the body. Blood deficient in quality or quantity, imperfectly pumped or distributed, affects the food supply of the cells in general. A disease of the central nervous system affects the entire cellular organism. Likewise, in the social organism, we may very properly recognize two influences through which the majority of the individual units are affected. Certain eco- nomic conditions, such as bad crop years, financial crises, resulting from an unwise and undemocratic distribution of wealth, the potential food supply of citizenship, adul- terated foods, and poisons advertised as remedies, may in- terfere harmfully and extensively with the nutritive con- dition of our national citizenship. Such conditions make themselves felt in death rates, birth rates, marriage tables and divorce courts. The second influence, with which the first is closely blended, is the influence of the National Government on the health of the individual units which compose it. By national government (I use the word in both the sense of letter and spirit), I mean our national ideals which express themselves in the written law and in customs, the unwritten but nevertheless potent law. As the former drives by penalties, the latter coaxes with the shadow or substance of future prosperity. To conclude, we have, from a public standpoint, four principal diseases in the body politic : individual, municipal, occupational, and national. As government concerns largely common interest in contradistinction to individual interest, the public hygienist, at the present time, does not concern himself with individual diseases. SYMPTOMS OP DISEASE IN THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. The recognition, or if you will pardon a more technical term, the diagnosis of diseases in the social organism, like diseases in the cellular organism, is dependent upon the presence of certain symptoms. The symptoms are as defi- nite, as characteristic and as necessary in the true inter- pretation of disease in the one as in the other. This fact is not sufficiently recognized. Even experts in the study of 144 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH individual disease are prone to form hasty conclusions, that is to make "snap-shot diagnosis," by overlooking important underlying or correlating conditions, and so fail to apply proper treatment. If this is true in regard to the students of diseases in the cellular organism, how much more true is it of the public in general who are with praiseworthy ac- tivity interesting themselves as never before in the study of disease in the body politic. A symptom may be defined as a departure from the average phenomena of life. Just as the general vitality of the individual is measured in the rise and fall of the pulse wave, so may the general vitality of a community, a town or people be measured by the rise and fall or their general death rate above or under the average of fifteen per thou- sand. As we measure cellular aeriation or ventilation by the quality of respirations, so we may form conclusions as to the appreciation and use of fresh air by the community, town or people in the rise or fall of the tuberlous death rate over or under the average of 160 per 100,000. Individual cleanliness has its analogue in the body politic in a low typhoid death rate, a death rate under the average of 22 per 100,000. The average maternal intelligence of a community and the sanitary quality of the public milk supply are truly indexed in the rise or fall of the infantile death rate over or under 100 per 100,000 population. The eificiency of the quarantine service is told in the death rates from conta- gious diseases compared with the national death rate for the same class of diseases. Mosquitoes speak of stagnant water in terms of the malarial death rate. The sincerity of the medical profession's support of health laws is accu- rately indexed in the proportion of deaths to cases of the reportable diseases. The value of all these symptoms that I have mentioned in their bearing on the diagnosis of disease in the body politic is well illustrated in charts, which I will be glad to discuss with any one interested after the adjourn- ment of this conference. The symptoms of occupational diseases are those that we have already mentioned, to which we may add certain special symptoms, such as "phossy jaw" in phosphorous DISEASES OF THfl SOCIAL ORGANISM 145 workers, plumbism in painters, and tuberculosis in those working under conditions associated with insufficient venti- lation. The diagnosis of occupational disease is more diffi- cult than that of municipal disease. It is more complicated, for the same occupation may be followed under very dif- ferent local conditions, and the same person may have fol- lowed different occupations at different periods of his life. For this reason it is important that death certificates shall state the length of time in which a decedent has been en- gaged in the particular occupation which he was following at the time of death. In the study of national disease it is manifestly impos- sible to detect symptoms of national scope through local comparisons; it is likewise useless to endeavor to reach our diagnosis by comparing one nation with another where the conditions of national life may be very different. We must fall back, then, on the only other method of com- parison (and symptoms and diagnosis, be it remembered, are nine-tenths comparisons), the comparison of the con- ditions of national life at different times in our history. Such a method of procedure shows, so far as mere quantity of life goes, a favorable condition; but if life is more than meat, we must not be content with quantity only, we must look to quality as well. Here we find many evidences of national disease. I may enumerate them as follows: Defectives, including feeble-minded, insane, blind, deaf, dumb and juvenile delinquents are estimated to number 3,000,000, or one-thirtieth of our population. Insanity increased from 183 to 225 per 100,000 in the twenty-three years from 1880 to 1903. Murder has trebled in the last fifteen years in this country. Prisoners have increased from 29 per 100,000 of the population in 1850 to 125 per 100,000 in 1904. Economic conditions in this country are pathologically significant. As the distribution of the food supply to the cells, that is the distribution of blood in the cellular organ- ism, has a profound bearing on the health of the individual body, so has the distribution of the potential food supply 146 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of the social organism, the national wealth, a profound bear- ing upon the physiological welfare of the body politic. Ac- cording to Spahr, 1 per cent or 930,000 of our population are rich; 11 per cent or 10,200,000 of our population are of the middle class and comfortable ; 38 per cent or 35,000,000 of the population are poor; 50 per cent or 46,000,000 own nothing; there are 5,000,000 paupers and 10,000,000 people in this country who suffer at some time of their life from poverty. Divorces have a profound pathological significance for those of us who are interested in the future of our country. One of the four elemental functions of living matter is re- production. Marriage is that condition of the social organ- ism which permits of physiological reproduction. Any- thing which interferes with this elemental function of the social organism strikes at the very root of the arbor vitae. Divorces increased in this country in the twenty years from 1867 to 1886, 157 per cent, the population 60 per cent; during the next twenty years from 1887 to 1906 divorces increased 160 per cent and the population 50 per cent. In this land of the free the restraining bonds of wedlock, the chordae tendenae of the heart of the social organism, are cast aside and broken more frequently than in all the rest of the civilized world. In 1905 the United States had twice as many divorces as Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Hol- land, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Canada and New Zealand combined, IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES IN THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF DISEASE IN THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. Diagnosis must rest on symptoms. The only symptoms of disease of the social organism are furnsihed by vital sta- tistics. The fact that vital statistics are so fundamental to health work, and that only two Southern States have become within the last eighteen months registration States, makes the question of vital statistics by far the most important phase of the public health question that any Southern as- sembly can possibly consider. DISEASES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM 147 Dr. Wm. Osier is quoted as saying that only 60 per cent of diagnoses are correct. By this he meant that in only 60 per cent of individual diseases are the principal pathological changes in the body detected and properly interpreted. This is due, in large part, to every student of disease having his pathological "hobby." He is especially interested in certain classes of disease, always on the watch for them, finds what he looks for, largely satisfies his interests and fails to go further, and in that way frequently overlooks correlated lesions which profoundly influence treatment. Today the ten dency to specialization is pronounced and the importance of correlation is not properly appreciated. This same de- fect in the professional attitude toward individual diseases has ils prototype in the attitude of sanitarians and sociolo- gists toward disease in the social organism. This tendency to specialization is indicated in the excessive number of special organizations seeking a common end, the uplift of our national life. For example, there 'are in my own field organizations for the study and prevention of tuberculosis, for decreasing the infantile death rate, for preventing pol- lution of streams and rivers, the Conference of Secretaries of State Boards of Health, the American Public Health Association, the Section on Public Health of the American Medical Association and others, not to mention the many organizations and meetings of those engaged in sociological work in other lines. With all these divided activities it is well for us to remember that during the last fifty years the symptoms of national deterioration, which I have already pointed out, developed alongside a growing church and school. That while we have improved the conditions of life, there is little to show that we have improved life itself. The cry of the time is for coordinated sociological effort. It is true that there are several kinds of phagocytes in the body, and each has its special function, but they all exist under a common government, and but for coordinated action, dis- ease would more often fight its way to the citadel of life. So must we, the phagocytes of the social organism, form a more compact defense against the common foes of hu- manity. 148 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH And now allow me to close this paper with one definite suggestion. Let us go home and secure the signatures of twenty-five, fifty or a hundred of the most prominent and influential sociologists of our respective States, calling a meeting of the divided forces for the purpose of forming next fall a State Sociological Association. Such an organi- zation will find its work, and this, the first meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress, its abundant reward. SOCIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF VITAL STATISTICS. ENNION G. WILLIAMS, M.D., COMMISSIONER OF HEL\LTH, COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, RICHMOND, VA. Sociological investigation during recent years has taught no more valuable lesson than the unity of all social work. No investigator lives unto himself alone; no field of social endeavor can be dissociated from the others. He who works for better health finds himself forced to do battle with a host of foes. Bad housing conditions, social immorality, child labor, physical degeneracy — these are but a few of the enemies to his progress. If he would give his people better health he must be prepared to join hands in a united war- fare not only with those who fight disease, but with those who fight conditions that breed disease. The same is true with practically every one of the movements for social bet- terment represented in this Congress. They are interde- pendent, correlated, unified. Nor does this apply to the general aspect of the problem alone. Indeed, the more detailed the study and the more closely focused the field of work, the more diversified are the evil conditions that must be combatted. Rural sanita- tion, for example, is but a single field of health activity, yet in laboring for improved sanitary conditions in country districts we find ourselves one with those who are agitating for improved agriculture, for better schools and for better roads. SOCIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF VITAL STATISTICS 149 The same is true of vital statistics, of which I wish briefly to speak. Nothing can be more fallacious than to imagine that the agitation for the registration of births and deaths is simply a public health propaganda. Vital sta- tistics, to be sure, furnish a pole star for health work, but vital statistics are a guiding light to many other barks on the sea of social progress. It is my purpose to discuss some of the broader social aspects of vital statistics and to point out how the statistics gathered by the health departments may be utilized by other investigators. In doing this I shall not detain you with even passing reference to the legal importance of a complete record of births and deaths. This is, I believe, an aspect of the sub- ject the importance of which is fully appreciated. Law without vital statistics is almost as impotent as law without recorded transfers of property. The broadest social aspect of vital statistics is its essen- tial relation to demography. And here we are in the infancy of a science that may do much for the South. Its impor- tance I can illustrate by a reference to my own State. When the census of 1910 appeared we Virginians were alarmed to see that in twenty-seven counties of the State there was a decline in our population. Confident that this was not due to the abnormal mortality in the depopulated counties we were at a loss to understand its significance, and even today can give no positive explanation of this condition. If we had had a vital statistics law on our books during the preceding deca.,de we would have possessed the information on which to base a conclusive study. We would have had a record shoAidng where every citizen of Virginia who died during the decade had been born, and we would have recorded the birthplace of the parents of every child born in Virginia. This would enable us to know how the citizens of a given county were scattered throughout the commonwealth. Were this system universal in the State it would be possible to trace in detail the migration of our people. Moreover, vital statistics are of the utmost demographi- cal value in investigating the movement, and the life-history of any class. Is there any element of society today that 150 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH seems to be losing in the old-world struggle for existence? Have the exacting conditions of modern life unfitted any part of our social organism for citizenship? Have we a vanishing race in our midst? In answering the question you think, of course, of our negro population. What is the real demographical answer to the so-called negro problem? What are the facts regarding this phantom? From vital statistics alone can we find the answer. When we study his mortality, when we examine the movements of the negroes to the city, when we collect more satisfactory data regard- ing special diseases, we will be able to answer this question of the negro. Vital statistics do not furnish a complete record, to be sure, but they give us more information on problems of this character than does any other single class of data. Again, vital statistics are of the utmost sociological im- portance in their bearing upon occupations. And here we are beginning to have a new vision of an old study. We have been talking for years of occupational disease, and we have charted with reasonable accuracy the comparative mor- tality of certain occupations. But disease is not the only aspect of occupation. While there are death-dealing trades, there are likewise demoralizing, economically depraving, degenerating occupations. These we can study through vital statistics as in perhaps no other way. For exam- ple, let us suppose that the vital statistics for the State of Tennessee were available and could be studied by the well- trained experts of this State's health department. Much data regarding occupational disease could be gleaned, but along with it, trained investigators would gather many other facts of importance. An abnormal amount of social dis- ease, for instance, might be found as the cause of death in a given occupation, alcoholism might be an oft-recurring secondary cause in another occupation; pulmonary disease might be found to claim victims among certain classes not now supposed to be particularly susceptible to them. In short, a glaring searchlight on a host of occupational ques- tions might be thrown from the pages of your vital statis- tics records. SOCIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF VITAL STATISTICS 151 In the same way, vital statistics have a very direct value to the students of child labor. In the first place, it is scarcely necessary to point out, a complete record of all births will put an end to all questions as to the disputed age of a child. But of still greater value will be the study of children's death certificates. Here will be found physi- cians' statements as to the cause of death in every case; from those can be found an answer to many mooted ques- tions. If the cotton mills are claiming their youthful vic- tims, vital statistics will demonstrate the facts and show of what particular diseases the children die. If the mor- tality among cotton mill children is not unduly high, that fact can be shown beyond all question. Indeed, so important is this aspect of the subject that I am almost emboldened to declare that the intelligent solution of the question of child labor can never be reached until we have vital sta- tistics law to settle the hotly-disputed arguments regarding the effects of child labor. Those who would build for the future in the conservation of child life must do battle in behalf of vital statistics. Again, vital statistics are an indispensable sociological tool in the study of the growth of insanity and feeble-mmd- edness. We have long been groping in the dark in the South in studying these problems and have gathered some facts that are most alarming. Insanity, in certain States at least, appears to be on the increase ; our asylums are crowded with an ever-growing throng of unfor- tunates. The feeble-minded are multiplying in our midst and degeneracy is abroad in the land. What con- ditions are responsible for these things; what part does heredity play in spreading these evils? Oftentimes our alienists — study the subject as they will — find themselves baffled and defeated. The information furnished them by the patient is, in the very nature of things, of practically no value ; commissions of lunacy often omit to report facts of the utmost consequence; a full, complete basis for the study is lacking. Were vital statistics available in every county, an hereditary taint could easily be detected and we could present to our Legislatures convincing evidence in behalf of the reforms we urge. 152 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH It would be easy to extend this list and to point out how the bookkeeping of humanity is essential to the audit of the books of life in every field of endeavor; but I have said enough, I trust, to illustrate at least the importance of the work and its significance in our general social uplift. In the new era which is upon us of the South, it be- hooves us to bestir ourselves and to utilize every agency that tends to the solution of our problems. All that science demonstrates and all that experience has taught should be unified and welded into a weapon of aggressive social war- fare. Surely vital statistics cannot be neglected. They should be gathered in every State and studied by those who would intelligently solve the problems before us. In doing this the registration area should be extended as rapidly as possible and every Southern State should be in- cluded. At present the number is pitifully small. Kentucky is now a standard registration State, certain areas of North Carolina are collecting statistics, Virginia and Mississippi have recently passed laws. Most of our cities have the standard system. But we must agitate for the extension of this list as rapidly as possible. We can learn much that will be of value to us, much that will be of service to the Nation. We live in a Southern clime, suffer much from tropical diseases, have a diversified and heterogeneous popu- lation, with a horde of negroes; we have, in short, con- ditions that have never been studied in the light of vital statistics and problems which have never been solved by the aid of this great guide. When vital statistics are gathered in every Southern State, I confidently expect that we will discover facts that may call for new activities and new lines of social work, facts that may allay ancient phantoms and remove old doubts. But in striving to this desired end, and in laboring to balance the books of life, we must not be content with partial statistics or faulty methods of administration. The Census Bureau, after years of experience, has devised a system which meets present demands at least. There may come a time when it will be desirable to add to the content of this certificate, and it may be wise, at some future time, THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 153 to provide for the collection of statistics at the time of mar- riage in the manner they are now collected for births and deaths ; but until that time comes the United States standard should be the goal of every State. Some of the delegates who are in the hall today doubtless plan to ask their Legis- latures for a vital statistics law at the next session. I beg of you, set your standards high and do not attempt to pass a law that will not conform to the Federal standard. To be useful, vital statistics must be uniform. They can never be uniform until the States appreciate the common need of the work and labor together to attain it. THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE. WILLIAM FRANCIS DREWRY, M.D„ SUPERINTENDENT CENTRAL STATE HOSPITAL, PETERSBURG, VA. The term mental defectives is used in this paper in its generic sense, embracing those individuals who have no in- telligence and those whose intelligence is decidedly sub- normal; that is, the idiot, the imbecile and the feeble- minded. All these represent various degrees of arrested de- velopment, or amentia, that depends upon either a congenital or an acquired defect or disease of the brain that prevents or checks its normal evolution, involving to a greater or less extent all the cerebral functions, while insanity im- plies mental alienation dependent entirely upon acquired physicial disease, and does not often affect one in childhood. Some definitions and differentiations of the above terms should perhaps be made in the beginning. "Amentia," to quote Dr. James T. Searcy, of Alabama, an able psychiatrist, "is a comprehensive term which has been used to designate an all-around want of normal mentality which has existed all the person's life, or since he has been old enough to have his mentality graded." In other words, "amentia is want of normal efficiency in all departments of thought." An 154 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH idiot is "an ament who cannot be taught to be useful in any- way to himself or to others, one who is utterly helpless and dependent" ; an imbecile is "an ament who can be taught to do useful things under the immediate care and direction of others"; a feeble-minded person is "one who can be trained and educated to be quite useful and sometimes can work independently of outside help, so the work is not too complicated." The classification adopted by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded includes idiots, imbeciles and morons, the last being dull or backward children. De Moor defines abnormal children as "those afflicted with anything whatever that unfavorably aflfects their lives in relation to the social medium in which they live." We have no accurate statistics as to the number of each of the several classes of mental defectives. It is impossible to secure full information, for several reasons, one being that there has not been generally adopted a satisfactory test, such as the Binet-Simon, or other mental test, by which may be measured varying degrees of mental capacity, or determined the grade of mental deficiency, in any given case; another being that many of such persons are hidden away, as it were, in the family, constituting a "skeleton in the closet." We know, however, that the blight of feeble- mindedness, idiocy, insanity, epilepsy, etc., exists in every class and condition of society and among all races of man- kind. The census of 1890 placed the number of feeble-minded persons in this country at 95,000, and that of 1903 at about 155,000. A careful statistician has recently estimated the number at present to be about 200,000, less than 30,000 of whom, including epileptics, are cared for in special public or private institutions. About three-fifths of those in insti- tutions are epileptics. Such institutions are located in twenty-seven different States, only four of which are South- ern States, namely, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. Ten years ago the superintendents of American in- stitutions for the feeble-minded thought that a very con- servative estimate was one to five hundred of the general THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 155 population. According to the opinion of Dr. Franz, of the Government Hospital, at Washington, vs^ho has made a study of this subject, the proportion is one to three hun- dred of the general population. These estimates indicate an increase out of proportion to that in the general popu- lation. Taking New Jersey as an example of the several States, figures, regarded as reasonably accurate, show that the number in that State has doubled in a single genera- tion. The same or worse conditions exists in other States. It is estimated by careful students that there are in this country at least 300,000 persons who are either insane or decidedly feeble-minded; that is, in the ratio of one such person to every three hundred of the general population. The computed increase of insanity within the past half century in this country, taken as a whole, has been about 300 per cent, which, according to the census reports, is far in excess of the increase in the general population, that being only about 138 per cent. Prior to 1880 the census enumerations were incomplete and incorrect, therefore these figures are misleading, yet from the best obtainable data there has been a gradual increase of insanity throughout the country. From 1904 to 1910 the population of the United States increased 11 per cent, while the number of reported insane persons was augmented during the same period by 25 per cent. December 31, 1906, there were re- ported 150,151 inmates in the hospitals for the insane in this country. January 1, 1910, there were 187,454, an increase of 37,303 in six years. During the past quarter of a century there has been in all the States a rapid increase in the hospital accommodations for the insane; still the increase in such accommodations has not kept pace with the increase in the insane population. In other words, there is always a large waiting list. From 1900 to 1910 the popu- lation of Rhode Island gained 26.6 per cent, while for the same period the number of patients in the State Hospital for the Insane gained 53.1 per cent. Dr. A. W. Ferris, ex-President of the New York Insanity Commission, re- ports that insanity has increased in his State about 104 per cent since 1890, while for the same period the increase 156 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH in the general population has been 47.6 per cent. Dr. Searcy, Superintendent of the Alabama hospitals, says that in the past ten years the increase of admissions into hospitals of that State was 45 per cent, while the population increased about 16 per cent. The increase in the accessions to the number of insane in the hospitals gives an approximate idea of the growing prevalence of insanity. In his book on "Mental Deficiency," Tredgold states that "a greater num- ber of defectives are today resident in our institutions than was the case of a generation back, and the exigencies of modern life must undoubtedly lead to an increase of this number in years to come." Statistics gathered from the annual reports of the Vir- ginia hospitals show that during the past forty years there has been decided increase in the number of persons who have been adjudged insane and sent to those institutions. The number of first admission cases, that is, different persons, or those who, for the first time, were committed to one or other of the State's hospitals, during each decade, is as follows: From 1870 to 1880, white 950, negroes 313, total 1,263; from 1880 to 1890, white 1,738, negroes 1,127, total 2,865 ; from 1890 to 1900, white 2,426, negroes 1,523, total 3,949 ; from 1900 to 1910, white 4,550, negroes 3,011, total 7,561. That is, there were six times as many individuals sent for the first time to the hospitals between 1900 and 1910 as between 1870 and 1880, five times as many white persons and ten times as many negroes. The number of patients in the Virginia State' hospitals at the end of each decade was as follows: October, 1870, 693; October, 1880, 1,135; October, 1890, 1,833; October, 1900, 2,780; October, 1910, 4,181. Therefore, there were six times as many patients under State care October, 1910, as there were October, 1870, five times as many whites and nine times as many negroes. At present there are 4,600 patients, 3,120 whites and 1,480 negroes in the five State hospitals, as against 2,780 eleven years ago, or a total increase of 1,820, or a net yearly average increase of 165. There are no insane in any jail or almshouse in the State. Now, as to the increase in the general population as THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 157 compared with that of insane persons in Virginia, which State I select as an average for the Southern States. It must be remembered that no account is taken of the insane who were in the jails and almshouses some years ago (none of any consequence being kept in jail or poorhouses for the past several years) , or of those who were or are now at home or in private sanatoria. The number is not incon- siderable, and would affect to some extent the following per- centages: From 1870 to 1880, the increase in the general population was 23.3 per cent, while that of the number of registered insane was 64 per cent (these figures may be unreliable on account of an incorrect census) ; from 1880 to 1890 the population increased 9.5 per cent, while the num- ber of insane increased 61.5 per cent; from 1890 to 1900 the increase in the general population was 11.9 per cent, and the number of insane was 51.7 per cent; from 1900 to 1910 the general population was augmented 11.2 per cent, while the number of insane advanced 50 per cent. By way of comparison, the number of insane in institu- tions January, 1910, per 100,000 of population, was, in Mas- sachusetts, 344.6, the largest ; in New York, 343.1 ; in Mary- land, 245, the largest for the Southern States ; in Alabama, 95.4, the smallest; in North Carolina, 114.3; in South Caro- lina, 101.7; in Tennessee, 100.9; in Virginia, 176.4. The larger ratio for the Northern and Eastern States is due in part to the larger alien and heterogeneous population as compared with the larger relative proportion of the native- born in the Southern States. The increase of insanity in Virginia, as well as else- where, is not as great perhaps as the foregoing figures indi- cate, for the following reasons : As our knowledge of medi- cine, particularly of psychiatry, and, consequently, our more accurate methods of diagnosis has increased, a relatively larger number of persons have been found suffering from mental disease and committed to the hospitals. There has been a gradual recognition of the advantages the hospitals offer, and the old aversion to them has practically disap- peared, resulting in comparatively more patients than for- merely being committed to their care. In fact, it is often 158 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH the case that persons, such as those suffering from the ravages of old age, or from the acute effects of alcohol, are sent to the hospitals for the insane when they might have been cared for at home. Th^ average duration of the life of the insane in the hospitals has, during the past quarter of a century, been prolonged by six or eight years, while that of the general population has been prolonged about four years; hence there has accumulated in the hospitals a large number of old and chronic cases. Years ago the insti- tutions did not provide sufficient room even to crowd in all who sought admission, many having to remain either at home or in the jails and almshouses, and, of course, are not included in our statistics, yet there are still many recogniza- ble as insane who are not placed in institutions for the in- sane. These reasons cannot, however, fully explain the growing increase of insanity from year to year, as shown by the hospital records. There has not been such radical change in such conditions as to account for the increasing aggregation in our hospitals. One is forced, therefore, to the inevitable conclusion that there has been an increase, though not as rapid as the statistics seem to prove, in the number of persons becoming actually insane or so mentally disturbed that it becomes necessary to place them under hospital care and treatment. At all events, let us try to get comfort from what Lugaro says in his work on "Modern Problems in Psychiatry." He cites certain facts which con- vince him "how unfounded is the pessimistic prejudice of those who, mistaking an increase of the numbers of persons under asylum treatment for a real increase in insanity, make statements calculated to alarm the public and accuse civili- zation of exacting from the human brain an excessive amount of activity." But we have the record, and from it only one conclusion can be drawn: That the insane popu- lation has increased relatively more rapidly than has the general population. The annual cost to care for the insane in the Southern States runs up into the millions of dollars, and as the years go by it will be necessary to enlarge the amounts for additional accommodations and maintenance, unless more active and advanced measures are adopted to prevent insanity and mental degeneracy and inferiority. THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 159 Through the efforts of Dr. J. T. Mastin, the efficient Sec- retary of the Virginia State Board of Charities and Cor- rections, who has made, in accordance with a joint resolu- tion adopted by the General Assembly, an investigation of the number, condition and whereabouts of the aments of all classes, we have the information that, including all degrees of mental deficiency, from the low grade idiot to the high grade imbecile, there are in the State about 6,000. The proportion, therefore, to the general population is about one to 350. Of these, about 4,500 are idiots or low grade •imbeciles, and about 1,500 high grade imbeciles. No simply backward children are included in his estimates. The most distressing feature is that 300 or more of these unprofitable citizens are women of child-bearing age, who are without proper custodial care. Many are in the almshouses, orphan asylums, jails, reformatories, and some in the penitentiary. The Legislature has, however, made a small appropriation to establish at the State Colony for Epileptics a separate de- partment for feeble-minded women. The North Carolina Legislature at its last session also saw its duty and did it by making provision for the establishment of an institution for the feeble-minded. It is in private families that most of the feeble-minded are to be found. Many a home, already severely taxed to provide support, is virtually pauperized by reason of the expense incident to the care of an idiot or feeble-minded member. The presence in a household of a mental defective is also a constant cause of heartaches and anxiety. There cannot be peace of mind in a family having such an ever- present sorrow. To the community the presence of such individuals is a perpetual menace, a constant source of trouble and danger. The cost to the family and to the State, under present conditions, is so great, and the effect so far- reaching, that they cannot be approximated. It is a matter of common observation by penologists and sociologists that there is frequently a close relationship between crime, immorality and mental inferiority. Such crimes as theft, incendiarism, rape or attempted rape, and even murder, are frequently committed by individuals who 160 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH are half-witted. It is an indisputable fact that a large per- centage of abandoned women, wayward boys and girls, and other moral delinquents, are recruits from the ranks of the feeble-minded, who are incapable of resisting temptation. Dr. Goddard, of Vineland, N. J., said before the Virginia Child's Welfare Conference, last May, that at least 25 per cent of the children in our reformatories are feeble-minded. From mental tests made recently in fourteen boys, taken at random, at the Virginia reformatory for white boys, all tested below normal mentality for their respective ages ; in some the mental defect was quite marked. Studies made some years ago of the inmates of the New York State Re- formatory revealed the fact that about one-fifth of them were decidedly mentally deficient. A similar investigation by experts brought out the fact that 21 per cent of the population of the Indiana reformatory were weak-minded. An examination of the mental condition of the nearly one thousand convicts in the penitentiary of that State resuMd in finding that 12 per cent were insane, epileptic or mentally deficient. I have no doubt that if careful examinations were made by psychiatrists there would be found in all peniten- tiaries and reformatories quite a number of inmates who are mentally abnormal or have stunted intellects. Unless re- strained and protected, the "moral imbecile," or the imbecile without moral ideas, is especially foredoomed to a life of vice and crime. In this connection it might be well to call atten- tion to certain types of psycopaths, or abnormal individuals, who roam at large until they commit some outrageous act or crime that shocks the community. It is then that their real mental condition is investigated, with the resultant opinion of insanity specialists that they are mentally deficient or insane and dangerous. It is criminal negligence to allow such defective-delinquents to remain free in the community. They should be apprehended, examined and, if need be, placed under proper and safe supervision. Were this done, many a useful life and much valuable property, and also expenses incident to legal proceedings, would be saved. A brief consideration of the more important causes of mental degeneracy, disease and weakness will suggest the THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 161 lines along which our efforts should be directed. The pre- dominating cause is to be found in bad heredity — a blight passing directly from generation to generation, or perchance skipping a generation. In the term heredity is included both similar hereditary, that is, the transmission to the off- spring of the same form of mental or nervous defect or disease that existed in the parent, and dissimilar, that is, where the parent suffered from a different form of defect or disease from that which afflicts the offspring. In 70 per cent, may be more, of all the various types of mental, physi- cal and moral defectives, there is a history of idiocy, imbe- cility, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, insanity, alcoholism, syphilis or some other degenerative "taint" in the ancestors of such afflicted persons. Profound thinkers have said that most of the human "misfits" are born and comparatively few are made. In 65 per cent or more of fe^ble-m'ndedness there is a defective hereditary strain, direct or collateral, similar or dissimilar. The same is true of epilepsy, and in the case of insanity about two-thirds start life with more or less defect or mental unbalance. A child coming into the world with mental inadequacy or with a subnormal or weakened constitution, as result of ancestral mental defects or disease, or of epilepsy, alcoholism, tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis or other neuroses or constitutional disease, starts upon a maimed existence, so handicapped that he cannot withstand the stress and strain like a child whose forbears are normal and healthy and whose environmental conditions were good. The highest possible standard of physical moth- erhood is one of the most essential conditions to race im- provement; hence, the condition and the environment of mothers during gestation should be well looked after. Hon. E. P. Bicknell, lately Secretary of the Indian Board of Chari- ties and an eminent sociologist, says that "while it is easily possible for parents of normal faculties, through dissipation, vice or disease, to produce feeble-minded offspring, there seems no method by which the tendency can be reversed, and degeneration thus easily accomplished displaced by re- generation and restoration in succeeding years." The union of two stocks when in either or in both, there 162 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH is insanity or nervous disease, feeble-mindedness, etc., usual- ly results in some of or all the offspring being in some way defective. Dr. Johnstone, that master mind of the Vineland Training School, New Jersey, says that his investigations show that where both parents are feeble-minded, all 'the children are always feeble-minded; that alcohol, syphilis, tuberculosis and illegitimacy are found in every one of the degenerate families; and that much of the crime of the petty sort, and even arson and murder, are committed by semi- responsible feeble-minded persons. In or out of wedlock mental degenerates frequently become parents of children who are destined to be feeble-minded, idiotic, epileptic, in- sane, deaf-mute, blind, inebriate, paupers, tramps or crimi- nals, and charges upon the family or the community. It has often been observed that there is a tendency in degenerate families to excessive production. It has been said that "it appears that while nature tends to check increase in the case of gross bodily infirmity, it is otherwise where only the higher faculties are involved in the degenerative process." There are no doubt sporadic cases of mental infirmity and idiocy that cannot be charged to a bad heredity, but it is comparatively seldom that a mentally defective child is the offspring of physically and mentally normal parents. There is, of course, a certain proportion of cases that are brought about in utero, or that can be traced to accidents at birth, injuries resulting from instrumental or complicated delivery, or to head injuries, or to diseases in infancy or early life, such as meningitis, scarlatina, measles, etc., which cause cellular disintegration or non-development of brain structure. Severe shock from fright — psychical trauma — may also be an etiological factor in cases of arrested mental development, as well as epilepsy and insanity. Bad environ- ment and poor nourishment, too, sometimes occur as con- tributing causative factors, especially in the predisposed. It is said that in France, where the residents of the Com- mune of Batz on the Loire Inferieure acknowledge and bow to the laws of rational living, mental defect is absolutely un- known, and the number of children born is about the ordi- nary. (Barr.) THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 163 One of the most potent causes, direct or predisposing, of nervous and mental diseases and defects is syphilis. Dr. Isadore Dyer, of Tulane University, truly says that "the by-effects of this disease as expressed in late nervous affec- tions and in the evidence of hereditary influence are con- stantly on the increase, and the insane asylums everywhere are burdened with the victims of this disease, either suffer- ing the penalty of their own sins or the transgressions of their ancestors." Furthermore, as is well known to the medical professions, venereal diseases are responsible for a large number of premature births, deaths in infancy, blind- ness and various other forms of human infirmity and decay. Syphilis is indeed a child-destroyer. Alcoholism and drug addictions are also responsible for much of the mental and nervous affection, to say nothing of moral degeneracy and crime. Alcoholic and drug habitues are the fathers and mothers of many of our insane, feeble- minded, epileptics, paralytics, etc. Surely, it is a solemn doctrine that "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." A congenital or an acquired mental defect cannot be cured and normal mentality established, and only a few cases can be improved; therefore, practically our only recourse is in prevention and custodial care. This statement applies with equal force to epileptics. The subject should be dealt with from two aspects : that of the afflicted person and that of the community, that is, the family of the defective and the public at large. There needs to be a guardianship over such persons. A superior intellect is necessary to guide and protect those who are incapable of self-preservation, or of earning their own living or adjusting themselves to the ordinary environment and conditions, or who are a menace to the community. The State alone is qualified to assume such guardianship. What will the State do about it? The present cost to the State would be inconsiderable as com- pared with that of the future when the number will neces- sarily be much augmented unless something is done to check the constantly increasing numbers. In our present state of knowledge there seem two lines 164 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of action that might be pursued with reasonably good results in checking this most subtle form of race suicide; one is to prevent the production of more defectives, and the other is to segregate and give custodial care to those already in existence. No person who is mentally incapable of caring for himself should be permitted to add to his burden or to that of others by bringing into the world others of his kind. The greatest asset of the State is a healthy, normal citizen. Laws, then, should be enacted to prohibit the marriage, certainly during the reproductive period, of the unfit. As sentiment and convenience and self-gratification, rather than science or consideration of race culture, are the domi- nating influences in pairing of the sexes, legal restrictions as to selection would undoubtedly meet with disapproval on the part of many who are directly concerned. Venereal dis- ease, too, that great scourge, the pernicious effect of which is so insidious and far-reaching, particularly upon the ner- vous system, should also be a bar. Surely, a syphilic should not have the right to hand down to posterity a disease that has perhaps been or will be his ruin, for "the effects of such disease is to produce a race of inferior beings by poisoning the sources of life and sapping the vitality and health of the offspring," who in turn, if they become parents, are liable to transmit organic defects and disease to their children. Sterilization of epileptics, habitual criminals, imbeciles and persons suffering from recurrent or incurable types of insanity, should, under proper legal safeguard and medical advice, be required by law. Such persons are unfit to assume parenthood, hence the power of procreating their kind should be taken from them by the relentless hand of science, under sanction and authority of law. It is doubtful if the public is ready for such an advanced measure ; therefore, it should be gradually, cautiously and carefully adopted. How- ever, the Legislatures of Indiana, Connecticut, Iowa, Utah and New Jersey have already authorized sterilization of certain defective persons, but the law has been only par- tially enforced. There is no question that such laws as those herein sug- gested would be evaded in many instances, yet they would THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 165 undoubtedly serve as a means of educating the people re- garding prophylaxis, and, in a measure, diminish the num- ber of defectives, thereby improving and invigorating the race. In order to enforce the obedience to such laws, it might be well to place the violation of them in the penal code. Certainly any rational person affected with syphilis or other venereal disease, who marries, should be deemed guilty of a felony, and, upon conviction, severely punished ; and any sane person who marries another person known to be epileptic, imbecile, etc., should likewise be made to suffer a legal penalty. Dr. Charles B. Davenport says in a paper on "The Origin and Control of Mental Defectiveness," that "in some way or other society must end these animalistic blood-lines or they will end society." Segregation, custodial care and employment on a colony farm, under control of the State, should apply to as large a number of the feeble-minded, imbeciles, epileptics and con- firmed drunkards as possible. In a colony many of such defectives could be given manual training and do many use- ful things about the farm, the house, the shops, etc., thereby contributing largely to the maintenance of the institution. In connection with every State prison and reformatory there should be a psychiatrist to examine into the mental condition of all prisoners before discharged, and if found insane or defective, have them committed to the proper institutions. In order that we may acquire a better knowl- edge of the causes and the best means of prevention of the various tjT^es of mental degeneracy and disease, there should be organized research in State institutions, working under the direction of a department of eugenics and experimental psychology at the State's University. There is such appall- ing ignorance and indifference in regard to the subject that some sort of organized plan should be devised and prose- cuted in every section of the country. The American Breed- ers' Association, in its section on eugenics, is endeavoring to do educational work along the line of efforts to improve the future generations, and should be supported in such 166 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH good aims. Eugenics seeks to prevent the production of abnormals in the future. As regards mental backwardness, this is a distinct phase of the general subject of mental defectiveness or deficiency, which would in itself require a lengthy paper. I am satis- fied that quite a good proportion of children attending the public schools, certainly 3 or 4 per cent, suffer from more or less mental deficiency or backwardness, and consequently are placed at a great disadvantage in trying to keep up with the classes as usually formed. These dull children cannot be advanced from grade to grade as the normal children are, consequently many of them become discour- aged and stop school with a mere smattering of a primary education. Systematic medical inspection of school children should be generally adopted and every physical defect remedied as far as possible. Educators, physicians and others interested in child welfare should recognize the importance, the necessity and the justice of special classes or departments for the training and teaching of the back- ward children in order that they may be fitted as well as possible for the battle of life and for productive citizen- ship. In an article on "Our Human Misfits," Dr. Woods Hutchinson says, in discussing the prevention of insanity, that "the vitally important fact of the whole situation is that of all those who, under present circumstances, become insane, at least 75 per cent could have been detected by an expert eye before they reached fifteen years of age, and, if curable, given proper training and environment; if in- curable, isolated and properly dealt with." If we would stem the tide of mental defect and disease there must be cooperation of the various forces interested in the betterment of the human race and the utilization of every possible agency. The general medical practitioner has better opportunities than any one else to bring into operation the best measures of prevention or prophylaxis of mental disease, therefore he should have at least a fair knowledge of psychiatry. Every medical student should be given an opportunity for clinical instruction in mental diseases, which would result in his earlier recognizing in- THE MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE INSANE 167 cipent cases. The success of psychiatry depends largely upon the interest taken in it by the general practitioner and the cooperation between him and the psychiatrist. There need be outdoor departments at the State hos- pitals for the gratuitous professional advice to persons suf- fering from premonitory mental symptoms, and provision for the voluntary commitment of acute cases especially. There should also be in connection with some of the general hospitals in the larger cities, psychopathic or observation wards under the care of skilled specialists and trained mental nurses, for the care and treatment of certain cases of "threatened" insanity or incipient or transitory mental disturbance. Indeed, every general hospital supported en- tirely or in part at the public expense should be required to make provision for at least the temporary care of mild or incipient cases of insanity. The management and control of insane persons pending their transfer to a hospital should be taken out of the hands of jail and police authorities and placed under the jurisdic- tion of authorized medical agents or the boards of health. It is simply inhuman, as well as disastrous to the welfare of the insane — mentally sick persons — to confine them in jail as if they were criminals. There should be associations or committees throughout the State to look after patients that have been discharged or paroled from the institutions for the insane or the feeble- minded. This would furnish an opportunity to become more conversant with conditions under which the mental defect or disorder developed, thereby giving opportunity in many instances of instituting preventive measures. Similar asso- ciations or committees should look after the interest of per- sons sent from prisons and reformatories. There should be a general educational movement en- gaged in by physicians, health authorities, school teachers, clergymen, editors and leaders in social betterment, for the purpose of informing the people regarding the relation of heredity, alcohol, venereal diseases, poverty, vagrancy, un- healthy environment, bad mental habits, etc., to insanity and mental and moral degeneracy. 168 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH If the plans suggested in this paper which have already been suggested by others and received the sanction of ad- vanced thinkers, could be adopted, within a few genera- tions, the number of mental defectives, insane, epileptics, etc., would, I believe, be so materially decreased that the problem of dealing with them would be much simplified. The problem is now beset with many difficultiess yet it is one of such vast and vital importance that physicians, so- ciologists and legislators cannot afford to treat it with in- difference. "Isn't it time," asked a noted writer, "that we sat down quietly and unafraid to discuss the problem of our human misfits." It is a reproach to an enlightened people that so little has been done to stem the tide of feeble-mind- edness, mental degeneracy and disease. The public should be aroused to a full understanding of the situation. Efforts should be aimed at urging the Legislatures of our several States to enact common-sense laws to check the propaga- tion of the defectives and to make provision for their segre- gation and custody. I have presented in this paper no original ideas and have repeated much I have said on other occasions, but it seemed to me worth while to reiterate some important truths which so seriously affect us as a people, with the hope that more general interest may be created and that by earnest, intelligent and united efforts good results may be attained. Let us ever bear in mind the scriptural injunc- tion: "Ye who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." THE CARE OF THE DEGENERATE. ALEXANDER JOHNSON, GENERAL SECRETARY NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION; FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF THE INDIANA SCHOOL FOR FEEBLE- MINDED YOUTH. Many of the subjects which are brought up at a Socio- logical Congress really present problems. That is to say, THE CARE OF THE DEGENERATE 169 they are difficult questions. No one is quite sure of the best way to settle them. We need knowledge, study, obser- vation, a large number of cases investigated; a good deal of discussion to arrive at a consensus of opinion. But on the subject I am to present the problem stage has been passed. The investigations and the experiments have been made and recorded. We know just what ought to be done, and if there is a problem remaining it is simply that of how we can wake up the Legislatures and the public to a realizing sense of the importance of doing it. In talking to this Congress on the care of the degenerate, I shall begin where those who spoke on Wednesday morn- ing left off. I shall assume that the audience understands that the feeble-minded and epileptic can be taught, although few of them can be cured. I shall add, to what was said on Wednesday, that my experience of ten years' work among them has proved to me that not less than 40 per cent of the whole number of idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, morons and epileptics, if you only begin their training when they are young, say six to eight years of age, can be trained to be entirely self-supporting under proper care and guardian- ship. By this I do not mean that an imbecile man or woman can be educated to do a full normal man's or woman's work. If he could he would be three times self-supporting. The able-bodied, strong-minded laborer can earn a living for himself and a family ; equal perhaps to the support of three adults. If this is not so where is your next generation of laborers to come from? Now, then, if my imbecile laborer does one-third of a full man's work, or just enough more than that to pay the extra cost of supervision which arises because he is an imbecile, then I think he is entitled to be classed as self-supporting, provided his labor is properly utilized. Now with this assumed, or asserted, what is the next step ? We don't know exactly the number of feeble-minded in the Nation. I shall speak of that class of degenerates chiefly because it is the most dangerous class and is typical of all the rest. But we know without any doubt that the number is about equal to that of the insane. We find, also. 170 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH that every other social trouble is complicated by feeble- mindedness. We find them among the paupers in every poorhouse. In the reformatories from 10 per cent to 30 per cent of the prisoners have been found to be mentally defective. In the prisons are a large number. We find them among the tramps. Many prostitutes are of this class. There is not a difficult piece of social work that is not made more difficult because of f eeble-mindedness. They are a large class and are becoming larger. If they could be deported to an island in the Pacific and kept to themselves they would die out. Degeneracy tends to extinc- tion. But we do not leave them to themselves. Their decay- ing stock is constantly recruited by strong, if vicious, blood from outside. We all know the life history of the feeble- minded girl and woman, the pitiful story, weakness the prey of vicious strength. We all know instances of families of children, one following the other, born of feeble-minded mothers. Rarely are the fathers feeble-minded men. In some way or other, as petty criminals, paupers, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, in some undesirable way of living, the neglected imbecile and idiots are supported by the public. Only with good care and control can they support themselves. For all the misery they suffer from our neglect they revenge themselves by increasing, each generation, our burden and our shame of insanity, idiocy, crime, vice, pau- perism and degradation. Is this picture too black? I believe the reality is blacker. I have said the total number of the feeble-minded of all classes, idiots, imbecile and morons, is about the same as that of the insane, say one in 300 of the population. This is a conservative but careful estimate. Of the insane in the United States about 80 to 85 per cent are in something like proper care. Of the feeble-minded, less than 15 per cent are in something like proper care. Why this differ- ence? The reason is plain enough. We are afraid of the insane, but we despise the idiot. And yet the danger to the body politic is much greater from the idiot than from the lunatic. Only a very few of the insane will have children. Only a few of their children will inherit the mental defect. THE CARE OF THE DEGENERATE 171 But most of the idiots and imbeciles, left to themselves, will become parents, and nearly all of their children will be like themselves or worse. The remedy seems to me to be plain enough. Let every State have schools for the children and colonies for the adults, not for a few, but for all. Train them, teach them, employ them, control them. The number is about the same as that of the insane, but the necessary cost of their care is very much less. Forty per cent self-supporting; 30 per cent or more, partly so; only 30 per cent or less, incapable of any labor. The sim- plest life makes them the happiest. Simple buildings, clean and comfortable, abundant land to work on, common sense and human kindness in their management. An immediate outlay of a considerable amount to gather them all in — not a few, all of them — and then every year a lessening of ex- pense, of crime, pauperism, petty vices, until after thirty years the numbers reduced by 75 per cent, the total expense becomes negligible. Fully 75 per cent of the present feeble-minded are the children of feeble-minded parents. Just as soon as the whole class is segregated, the 75 per cent will cease to come into existence. There will always be some sporadic cases, but with three-fourths of the number cut off and all the new ones properly cared for, the largest single cause of pauper- ism, vice, crime and degeneracy will have been eradicated. With regard to the management — the first essential is happiness. Make the feeble-minded happy and you can do almost anything with them. Fail in that and your failure is total. They are very easily pleased. Most of them are cheerful, affectionate, fickle beings. They are children always. The mother State must take them into her good motherly arms and care for and control them as the best thing for her and by far the best thing for them. They are the weak. "You who are strong must bear the burdens of the weak." They are the little ones. If any make them to offend, "it were better that a millstone were tied about his neck and he were cast into the sea." And if we, by what we do, or by what we fail to do, either as individuals 172 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH or as a community, cause these ignorant, weak, grown-up children to fall into vice and degradation, to offend — how shall we escape this condemnation? THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM. CHARLES L. MINOR, M.D., ASHEVILLE, N. C. During the years in which I have especially con- cerned myself with tuberculosis, I have been more and more impressed, as I worked and thought on it, with the fact that the problem of its eradication from the community is not so much a medical as a sociological one; not so much a question of the cure of sick people as of the prevention of the infection of well ones, and that in the final analysis it is as much a question for the sociologist, the re- former and the philanthropist as for the doctor. Hence, when your Secretary asked me to speak to you today on tuberculosis, I told him that if I could treat of this aspect of the problem and deal with the relations of sociol- ogy to the prevention of tuberculosis, I would be glad to do so. Do you ask me why this is a sociological problem, and why it concerns this body? The dictionary defines sociology as the science whose aim is to treat of the laws which govern the development of society, the progress of civilization and all that relates to society, and your program on its title page announces that your purpose is to study and improve the social, civic and economic conditions in the South. If this be your purpose, gentlemen and ladies, then there should not be one of you who is not interested in tuberculosis, for this great scourge has for ages been affecting the de- velopment of society, retarding its progress, dragging down to poverty and degradation the men on whose efficiency SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PEOBLEM 173 that progress depends and adding yearly thousands to the great army of the unproductive whom it is your task to make into useful, productive, self-respecting citizens. Again, your study has been called the science of society, and tuberculosis is pre-eminently a disease of society, of aggregated bodies of men, of unfavorable surroundings, of crowded tenements, of unhygienic conditions of work. Re- move these, improve your tenements, lessen the congestion of your cities, shorten the hours of work of your laborers and clerks, improve the poor man's cookery, encourage cleanliness in his home and his habits and sanity in his amusements, and experience would indicate that this great curse of society would quickly loose its chief breeding ground and its terrible pre-eminence among the scourges of humanity, and our submerged tenth would have a chance to climb from their slums to better things. Again, sociology concerns itself with man, the final ele- ment in society, and seeks to raise him, no less physically than mentally, by improving the society of which he is a part, and nothing, unless it be alcoholism, does as much as the great white plague to render your efforts in this direc- tion fruitless. Hence, I feel that it is most appropriate that this Congress should for a while turn its attention to this disease and study the ways and means of banishing this drag upon the progress of the South, which we all love so much and which we want to see taking its place in the forefront of the fight of humanity for better things. If you are to study this subject it will be necessary to understand something about this disease, and here I crave a little of your time to make plain to you what Tuber- culosis is, of which the public hears so much, and yet of which it actually knows so little. It is no new disease; the great Greek physician, Hippo- crates, centuries before the time of Christ knew and de- scribed it accurately ; Araetaeus, the Roman physician, fifty years before the birth of Christ, gave a perfect description of it, and for millenniums it has been annually taking its enormous toll of human life. The disease is the result of the growth in the human body 174 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of a small germ or fungus which usually lodges in the lungs. The changes it produces here ordinarily come on very slowly during the course of months or years while the victim does not know he is sick. Unlike other diseases, it does not generally cause death quickly, but slowly undermines the constitution, lessening and finally removing the patient's working efficiency, gradually producing invalidism and bringing the end after a course of from one to many years, during which time society is deprived of the victim's work. That it was transmissible from man to man (for the term contagious cannot rightly be applied to the slow manner in which it invades the human body) has been suspected from the days of Hippocrates, and so positive were the mediaeval doctors of this transmissibility that in the seventeenth cen- tury in Naples it was declared by law to be infectious, and the clothing of those dying of consumption was disinfected by the city. But it was not until 1860, when the center of medical thought was in France and enormous advances were being made in scientific medicine, that the fact of its transmissi- bility was positively demonstrated by Villemain, of Paris, who reproduced the disease by inoculating sputum or tissue from tuberculous people into rabbits, and even then the profession was not completely satisfied. In the next de- cennium the immortal Lewis Pasteur laid broad and deep the foundations of the modern science of bacteriology, and his work in studying germs for the first time made it pos- sible for doctors to make an intelligent search for the cau- sative factors of infectious diseases, and I might say that every mother whose child today is saved from death by diphtheria or some other germ disease, should have grateful thanks in her heart to that great humanitarian to whom modern medical science owes so much. The methods and principles once laid down by a great pioneer mind, it was only a question of time until other great minds, stimulated by his, would find the truth, and the plain German country physician, later the world-renowned chemist, Robert Koch, finally discovered the germ, cultivated it outside the human body, studied its life history and finally proved its relation SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 175 to the disease by reproducing it in inoculated animals. Thus with the development of the microscope and the science of bacteriology, and following a study of the action of these germs in the bodies of animals, came a knowledge of the final factor in the causation of this disease, without which our knowledge of it would be incomplete and our treatment of it ineffectual. When I think of the wonderful researches behind our present knowledge of disease, when I think of what is being done daily to save human beings from suffering and death by the work of scientists and by the aid of animal experiments and vivisection; when I recall how many such men have been ready to lay down their lives in the search for truth in order to save their fellowmen; when I see around me countless children who have been spared to their loved ones and to the community by such work, I cannot but feel indignation at the unpardonable ignorance and folly of those misguided enthusiasts who, mistaking sentimentality for real feeling, show more pity for a rabbit or a dog than for the child whose life is saved through the animal's death, and who would seek, through the prohibition of vivi- section, to hold back the wheels of the chariot of scientific knowledge in its beneficent course, and to check the study of the causes of disease through experiments on the lower ani- mals. Much as I love our dumb brutes, near to my heart as is my dog, I, and any reasonable men, would stand ready to sacrifice my dearest canine friend, or ten thousand of them, if thereby I could save from suffering and death the child who is dearer to me than life Itself. But to return to my subject. The germ which causes this disease, when it becomes active in the human body, causes the formation, by its irritation, of small masses of cells which are called tubercles. These show a natural ten- dency to degenerate into dead, cheesy matter, and the process thereby spreads through larger and larger areas of the body, while the tissues thus destroyed in the lungs leave behind cavities with the formation of much scar tissue, while the absorption of the poisons of the germ causes the typical symptoms of the disease, fever, chills, sweats, ema- 176 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ciation, etc. The nature of the process may be made plainer to you if I liken it to that mould which you have doubtless seen attack beams under old houses, turning them slowly into a soft, white, rotten mass. As you all doubtless know, the disease is handed on from man to man through the ex- pectoration of its victims, which, coming from the lung which is being broken down by the germ, swarms with these organisms, so that, if it is not properly disposed of, it can spread the disease to others, when after spitting it is dried up, pulverized and blown around. Although there are other sources of the germ besides the sputum, it is so much the greatest source that could the spitting habit be stopped, and could the sputum of all the sufferers with tuberculosis or consumption be properly dis- posed of, it is well within the realm of possibility that the disease could be eradicated in a short time. Fortunately the majority of the germs brought up are deposited out- doors, and here nature's self-protecting forces comes to our aid, for the sunlight, or even diffuse daylight, kills the germ very quickly, and thus outdoor infection is very rare. Let it never be forgotten that tuberculosis is essentially an in- door disease. It is when the germs are distributed indoors by careless or dirty people, who, among the lower classes, are the rule rather than the exception, that great danger arises, and it is indoors in the houses of the poor that it finds its great friends who enable it to live in peace and unharmed, and to spread with ease. I refer to dampness, darkness, lack of fresh air, dirt and undernourishment. On account of this the well-to-do classes, who have been trained to cleanly habits, who do not spit promiscuously, whose bodies are well nourished and well cared for, and therefore very resistent to infection, and whose houses are well lit and ventilated and kept clean, escape relatively easily; a much smaller number are infected, their doctors discover the disease earlier, they have the means to get proper treat- ment and to go to proper climates, and when they return they can regulate their lives in such a way as to make their cure permanent. Therefore, while even among them, as we all know, the disease is far from rare, they can be neglected SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 177 in any sociological consideration of this trouble, and our attention should be turned to the poor who are weakened by unfavorable surroundings, whose habits are uncleanly, who are undernourished and prone to infection, who are not closely watched by their doctors and cannot go away for their health. Their houses are damp and filthy and unven- tilated, their often windowless rooms are horribly over- crowded and never cleaned, the sick must mix closely with the well, and especially with little children who are most easily infected. Their food is insufficient and badly pre- pared; their places of work, to the shame of their employers be it said, are often improper and violate every rule of hygiene and decency, and even when the employers are public-spirited and supply them with proper quarters, those who have worked among them know too well that they seem to take a pleasure of spitting promiscuously around, even when spittoons are right at hand. At night they, like all humanity, crave relaxation from their labors. The only bright, attractive meeting place they can find is the saloon, for they have not, like us, pleasant homes, comfortable clubs or beautiful theaters, where they can seek the recrea- tion which is natural and essential for all mankind, and therefore dissipation quickly comes to weaken the consti- tutions already undermined with hard work and poor condi- tions of life. Thus they fall a ready prey to the germ which comes to them in the dust of their houses and factories and mills, where it had been spread through dirty habits of their fellows, and I could cite you innumerable examples of how the disease is passed on in this way. Having thus shown you how people of the lower classes so easily become infected, I would not have you jump to the unjustified conclusion that nobody can escape such a ubiqui- tous organism, or that everyone must fall a prey to tuber- culosis, just as they would acquire smallpox if exposed to it when unvaccinated. Fortunately, this is not the case, al- though this dread of infection, which brings forth the most cruel and selfish traits in humanity, has led to a great deal 178 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of very needless cruelty to those suspected of having the disease. Nature has given us several means of prevention, which act automatically and to which is due the fact that the disease has not long since swept humanity from the world. I have already pointed out the disinfecting power of sun- light, fresh air and cleanliness, and noted that it is largely indoors that the germ is to be feared. Further, the healthy man has a remarkably good resistance to the disease and many germs which enter the body are either destroyed by the cells or are shut in quickly within the walls of scar tissue and rendered harmless. Only when the body's vitality is lowered by hereditary weakness, by sickness, by starva- tion, overwork or worry, is our natural resisting power lowered below the safety point. Certain races, and es- pecially the Indian and the negro, are apparently consti- tutionally prone to the disease and show a very bad resist- ing power, while other races, like the Jews, especially when they adhere to the excellent hygienic laws of their faith, show an unusual resistance. In any case when the body is infected, the disease does not start acutely in the majority of cases, but lies latent in the glands and does not develop for from one to twenty years or more, when some condition of lowered vitality gives it its opportunity. Even then the body is often strong enough, if its condition be improved, to master it again so that the trouble may be avoided and not reappear for years, possibly never at all. If, then, it is chiefly in childhood, when the body is prone to infection, that the germ most easily finds a lodgment, then you can see how excessively important in the preven- tion of this disease becomes the care of our children in their first fourteen years. Dr. Von Pidquet, a noted German scientist, who has de- veloped a test that will show the presence in a human body of latent as well as active tuberculosis, found that in children under two years of age the disease is very often already present, and that by fourteen years of age 93 per cent of the children tested give a positive reaction. Again, Dr. Naegeli, of Zurich, demonstrated that all human bodies SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 179 over thirty showed, on sufficiently careful examination, the presence of some sign of cured, latent or active tuberculosis. So much for the facts as to the disease. Coming to their application, let me in the beginning lay it down as a funda- mental proposition that in this matter the first thing is not cure, but prevention; that cure can only effect individuals, while prevention is a blessing to the whole community and blesses not only the citizens of today, but the hundreds of thousands who are to follow us in the coming years. The question of cure is moreover a medical question, although even here we have to call upon the philanthropist to aid us in founding dispensaries where the sick can be discovered and treated, in employing visiting nurses to watch them in their homes and teach them cleanliness and hygiene, in building sanatoria where they can be sent to recover their health if curable ; and more yet, hospitals for the hopelessly advanced, where these poor creatures cannot merely be made comfortable in their last days, but rendered inocuous to the society in which they live and to which they can become a menace. But the far greater question of prevention is, as I have already said, essentially a sociological one. It is a matter of the education of the ignorant poor to decent habits of living. It is a question of proper tenements with adequate ventilation and light and water. It is a question of work- shop sanitation and of shorter hours of labor and of a living wage. All these things, gentlemen, belong to your province and only affect my profession in so far as it is interested, as to its honor be it said, it always is, in sociological prob- lems, because our calling has made us tender-hearted to the sufferings which we see so often. Of course, behind it all comes the as yet insoluable prom- lem of assuring to every man a sufficient means of support to allow of decent living, but while under present conditions, this time seems terribly far away, I cannot see gathered together those who are before me today, all striving toward this end, without believing that the time will come in the evolution of humanity when even that great question is to be solved, not perhaps by Socialism, although so many now 180 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH acclaim its virtues, but by the application in every-day life of the old truths taught so long ago in Judea by the Great Teacher, whose wisdom we all acclaim, but whose principles of brotherly love so few of us find ourselves able to follow. Leaving then aside, as hopeless of present solution, the question here touched upon, I would take up those things wherein you can hope for results; first, however, giving you a few statistics to show you, if that be necessary, how important it is for society that you interest yourselves in this fight and how much you can accomplish thereby. You represent the people of the South, thousands of whom are suffering and dying every day from this disease, and just as the father of a family must be interested when his child is stricken and must make every effort to save its life, so it is for you to do all you can to save our people from the ravages of a disease which is yearly rendering useless and killing more of our citizens than all other diseases combined, and in comparison with whose mortality cancer, smallpox, diph- theria and the recently much-talked-of hookworm diseascj sink into insignificance. But do you doubt that the need is so great. Do you think that we doctors are over-zealous in this matter? Do you think that the country has gotten along so far with no special efforts in this direction and that it is not necessary to go now to the trouble and expense of fighting this plague. I need only refer you, if so, to the boards of health of the different cities that you represent. They are daily seeing the ravages of this disease, they know what are its effects on the efficiency of your citizens, and they can give you the facts more graphically than can I. Enough to repeat the well-known fact that from one-tenth to one-seventh of all the deaths in the world are caused by tuberculosis, and that neither plague, pestilence or famine can compare with it as a scourge of humanity or as a destroyer of mankind. Or, let me call your attention to other States and other lands , to show what the campaign against tuberculosis has accom- plished and so can accomplish here. In Prussia, whose death rate from tuberculosis was 31 per 10,000 living in 1886, it had been reduced by 1906 to 17.25 per 10,000 ; in SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 181 England and Wales it has fallen from 27.8 in 1870 to 11.5 in 1906, while in the whole English-speaking population the mortality from tuberculosis has fallen 49 per cent in fifty years; in Denmark in thirty years there has been a de- crease from 30.2 to 15.3 ; in Belgium from 30.4 in 1888 to 24.5 in 1908. Coming to our own country, in five Eastern States and ten cities in these States, there has been a re- duction of from 27.2 in 1887 to 21.2 in 1900, while in New York City it has come from 27.9 in 1900 to 22.9 in 1908. Think what this means in the lives of thousands saved to their country and you will agree with me that no organiza- tion such as yours can fail to study such figures with atten- tion, and that few investments would pay such a heavy return on the capital invested. Remember that the value to the community of an adult human life has been variously estimated by statisticians as from three to five thousand dollars. Think, then, of the loss to the country through the innumerable deaths occurring everywhere arising from tuberculosis. Think of the many skilled workmen kept at their occupations, of laborers at their tasks, by such a cam- paign of prevention as is needed and in a less utilitarian manner, think of the sorrow and grief which can be avoided when you save to their dear ones those who now are so cruelly snatched away. Turning now to ways (the means you best know how to raise), sociologic efforts toward the eradication of tuber- culosis can be classified under three heads : educative, legis- lative and philanthropic, and, while each of these is im- portant, I would note that our Anorlo-Saxon faith in laws, as a cure of all evils, is usually in this country overdone, and that experience has uniformly taught that law is only useful when it is a crystalization of the beliefs and convictions of the public which passes the laws, and that without the approval of public opinion laws are not worth the paper on which they are written. Philanthropy is invaluable, yet it, too, has its dangers, being only too prone to paralyze individual effort and pau- perize its objects, and, as the experience of our multi-mil- lionaires in this country has shown, it needs the most careful 182 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH thought and deep study if large philanthropies are to have the beneficent results dreamed of by the givers. Teaching alone is not open to objection. Long ago it was said, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," and I doubt if a correct knowledge of the truth has ever injured anyone. Of all callings there is none so noble as that of the teacher, and he who, blessed with the knowledge of the truth, goes among his fellowmen to disseminate knowledge is the most useful, though, unfortunately, rarely the most valued of mankind. In most sociological fights teaching offers us our best means of combatting harmful influences in society, and to nothing can it be better applied than to the eradication of tuberculosis from our midst. First, naturally, it should begin in the school, and already many of our States have seen that the text-books of hygiene explain to the child the nature of this disease and the methods by which it can be avoided. Of course if such teaching is foolishly done it only creates alarm and does not give the confidence which correct information should always give, but our children have got to learn thoroughly the necessity of proper hygiene if our adults are to practice it naturally in their daily lives, for after the impressionable years of childhood are passed it is a much harder and more difficult matter to inculcate ideas of decent hygiene into the minds of men. I could give you plenty of cases to show how in our workshops and stores sickness is spread in this way, but I am not making a medical talk and it is not necessary there- fore to go here into such details. Something has been ac- complished by the posting of placards in a few up-to-date factories and a little by lectures to working people and even by moving picture shows. , Next, by the aid of district visitors and nurses and mothers' meetings, we can go into the homes of the poor and teach them how to make a wiser and more efficient use of the money they now so often waste on poorly chosen and worse cooked food, which, as is now known, is a common cause of dissipation and sickness amongst the lower classes. We can show them, even if with difficulty, that fresh air is a blessing, not as they mostly SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 183 believe, a danger; that a scrubbing brush and hot water mop is, after all, the best disinfectant; that soap, water and a towel are cheaper than sickness, and that a dollar care- fully spent can be worth two or three laid out foolishly. This by no means exhausts all that teaching can do; the circulation of health pamphlets and many similar things can in a measure give to all but the hopelessly degraded or the criminal poor the light they need and which they, with care, can be made to receive willingly. Next, the workmen in their workshops, factories and mills, and the clerks in their stores, and the public generally, must be educated by placards and circulars until a strong public sentiment is created against our filthy American habit of promiscuous spitting. Do we not all recognize it, ladies and gentlemen, how in our stores, in our shops, our factories and our mills, and on our railroads and street cars, more in the South, unfortunately, than anywhere else, almost every one spits on the ground, often hastening the drying and disseminative process by smearing it over with their feet? If so, you will not need to be told why it is hard to check this plague, especially among the lower classes, and both philanthropy and selfish interest would prompt you to take up this fight actively and at once. Next, as to legislation, if, as I have said, it is only useful wlien it expresses the moral and economical convictions of the people, then the proper education of the public by lec- tures, by placards, by articles in the press, etc., is an essen- tial preparation for any legislation. However, laws as to proper tenements, laws as to hours of work, laws as to compelling greedy employers to give proper conditions to employees, laws as to promiscuous spitting (though they are the hardest of all to enforce), all have a useful place in such a campaign if we do not allow the enthusiasm which forces their enactment to disappear as soon as they are placed upon the statute books, in which case, gentlemen, you may be very sure that our politicians will pay little attention to their enforcement. Finally, comes the opportunity for the philanthropist, and here let me say that the best philanthropist is by no 184 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH means always the very rich man, and that while the gen- erous rich man has a useful and invaluable function to fill and is one of the best products of American life, the philanthropies of men of moderate means added together probably every year turn more money to the good of suffer- ing humanity than the generosities of all the Rockefellers and Carnegies and Peabodys of our land, and we must not allow the large gifts of our millionaires to discourage the smaller givers. In any case, model tenements for the poor, if the poor are first educated into the decent use of such tenements, can be invaluable, otherwise they are soon turned into pig pens. Summer camps for the children and mothers of the poorer classes give a noble opportunity to the rich, and even to those of moderate means, to lighten the burdens and better the health of their poorer brothers and sisters. Many other ways in which philanthropists can help on such a crusade you can well think out for yourselves, but let me dwell only upon one which is of extreme importance, and which, if it is not taken up by philanthropists, should be carefully attended to by the State. I refer to the opening of hospitals for the hopelessly advanced consumptives of the poorer class whose cases are no longer susceptible of cure and who are a deadly menace to their families and neighbors through their dangerous and filthy habits. These can be both made comfortable themselves and harmless to those around them until the end in such institutions, and Dr. Newsholm, of the National Board of Health of England, one of the most distinguished authorities in the world, has shown that it is the hopelessly advanced case and the indi- gent dying consumptive who is the great source of the spread of this trouble, and that the disease decreases in any community as soon as he is segregated. He infects not only his own wife and little children, but often the others in his miserable tenement, so that whole Mocks of dwellings be- come infected and are known by city boards of health as "tuberculosis blocks." Such advanced cases the authorities should have power to place kindly but firmly in such insti- tutions where they could see but not infect their families, where they could be surrounded by the best of medical care SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OP TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM 185 and kind nursing, and where they, in their last days, could not only be made happier, but prevented from being a menace to the whole community. Finally, we come to the most difficult question of all — the question of the sick criminal poor — those who would rather be dirty than clean, those to whom the thought of others never comes, those who actually enjoy spreading their infection, and these, whatever we do for them, as soon as they are discharged gravitate back to their slums and their sins and their sickness, and become a menace to the health of the community. All students of the subject are united in admitting that they can only be controlled by political power and should be forcibly detained where they can do no harm. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I have very briefly indi- cated some ways in which you can be usefully active in fighting for the physical and hence the moral uplift of the South, and for the betterment of that great industrial class whose members are so often called "the backbone of our land," those who, though they can make a good living for themselves and their families as long as they are well, lay aside so little to fall back on in time of sickness of the head of the household that with them this sickness is too often the beginning of their enforced descent to a lower and worse social level as waning resources force them into cheaper and cheaper quarters, which necessitate worse and worse associates for their children, while one by one they relinquish those things which make for the decent bringing up of their families as desirable members of the community. Do not let us try to comfort ourselves with the thought that it is not our business how they live or how they die; in the words of the great Augustine, "Home Sum humani nihil a me slienum puto," "I am a man and nothing affecting hu- manity can be alien to me." It is our business, whether' we recognize it or not, and we cannot neglect it and do our duty as men. They are our fellow-citizens, often our em- ployes, or else we benefit by the fruits of their labors in some indirect way, and even on a lower and more selfish basis, if we do not step in and help them to foil the disease which 186 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH is decimating them, if we look on with selfish complacency because it has not attacked us, the infection will spread and will probably sooner or later involve us as it has already engulfed these unfortunates. Hence, both from altruistic and from selfish motives, it is our duty and our interest to do all in our power to im- prove the conditions Which aid the spread of this disease among our working classes. Whatever the defects of our age, it is the age of altruism and of sympathy for our fellow- man. The middle ages and the renaissance, save for the efforts of the Church, saw no organized movements for the sick and suffering. Philanthropy, as we know it today, did not exist. Tender-heartedness for the suffering of others was regarded as weakness and was only found in that sex who have never and, thank God, will never lack it, and which, from the davsm of history, have been happiest when their tender hands were soothing the brow of the suffering and moistening the parched lips of the sick. Today it is different. The press, whatever its sins in the spread of un- mentionable news amongst us, still brings to our ears the news of the world's sufferings and sorrows and to our heart the call of its distress. Everywhere we find that people are studying how best and most wisely to help their fellowmen. A real interest in our brother for his own sake is seen on every hand, and we can no longer justly speak, as once did the poet, of "man's inhumanity to man," seeing as we do daily in great congresses like this, and in many other ways, the evidences of man's tenderheartedness for his suffering brothers. Altruism and philanthrophy, guided by medical science, are daily advancing to the combat with misery and suffering and disease, because men have learned that nothing that affects humanity, even if that humanity be represented by some far-away squalid slum-dwellef, nothing which causes sickness and suffering and misery to our fellowmen can pos- sibly be alien to our interests or fail in appeal to our hearts. We of the South, always conservative and always slow, have not been, we must admit, as forward in sociological and philanthropic efforts as our brothers of the North, INSURANCE NURSING 187 although hearts are here fully as tender as any that beat in human breasts ; but "the world do move," and with in- creased manufacturies, increased population, increased riches, we begin to feel the needs which, as a largely agricul- tural community, we for a long time did not feel, and the assemblage of this great Congress is an evidence that we are awake and doing, and this is a meeting, I believe, pregnant with good for the whole South. I have shown you the situation and have roughly out- lined the steps you should take to meet it. Southerner as I am, knowing the men and women of the South as I do, I cannot doubt the result when you shall consider the oppor- tunity that is knocking at your door and recall the effects on our section of this disease which it is in your power to drive from your midst if only you will seize the oppor- tunity and attack the problem raised by the ravages of tuberculosis. To such a fight I call you in the name of the South which you love, and may the future prove how practically, how persistently and how earnestly you have heeded that call. INSURANCE NURSING. LEE K. FRANKEL, NEW YORK CITY. I desire to present for your consideration today the work which is being done by an insurance company for the im- provement of the welfare of its policyholders in the hope of obtaining the enthusiastic cooperation and support of the delegates of this Congress for what is comparatively a new movement. The particular company to which I refer, the Metropoli- tan Life Insurance Company, of New York, has for years conducted not only an ordinary insurance department, but 188 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH has devoted its energies more largely to insuring the work- ing people of the United States. Insurance policies issued in this department are placed not only on the lives of male adults, but on the lives of women and children as well. So successful has this business been prosecuted, and apparently so acceptable has insurance of this kind been to the mass of workingmen, that the company today has in force on the lives of men, women and children throughout the United States and Canada over eleven millions of dollars on ap- proximately seven millions of individuals. In the recognition that insuring an army of working- men, such as the above, involves definite responsibilities and stewardship on the part of the company, its officers have at- tempted along various lines to faithfully carry out the pro- visions of its policy contracts, which provide for the pay- ment of a definite sum at the death of the policyholder or at maturity during his life, and in addition thereto are endeav- oring, so far as lies within their power, to supplement the company's contractual relations by benefits not called for in the policy contract. At the time the premiums for industrial policies were originally calculated, no definite mortality table of the so- called industrial group was at hand, and of necessity the company's premiums were in excess of the amount actually required, as demonstrated by subsequent experience. The profits accruing from this source have been voluntarily re- turned by the company to its industrial policyholders, and in the last eighteen years twenty-five millions of dollars have been returned to policyholders in so-called cash bonuses and in the shape of mortuary dividends. The mortality of the company from tuberculosis has been high. In fact, the experience of the company shows that 18 per cent of the deaths on which the company pays claims is caused by tuberculosis. In the effort to reduce this mortality and to give individuals the opportunity to learn how to prevent tuberculosis and how to cure it should they be afflicted, the company has carried on a campaign of education among its industrial policyholders. Over five million copies of a pamphlet entitled "A War Upon Con- INSURANCE NURSING 189 sumption," have ben distributed, and this has been sup- plemented by lists of sanatoria in the various States and by a pamphlet entitled "Directions for Living and Sleeping in the Open Air," indicating to policyholders the method of carrying on a cure at home should they be unable to obtain admission in a sanatorium. While the distribution of educational leaflets, booklets, etc., has its distinct value, the importance of following up such a plan by personal instruction and guidance cannot be over-estimated. With this thought in view the company three years ago introduced its so-called visiting nurse ser- vice. At the present moment this service is offered gratui- tously in over 1,000 cities and towns, and is available for approximately six millions of policyholders. Mailing cards and circulars are distributed to policyholders advising them that should they become ill they may call for the nurse, who gives the usual treatment and care. In exceptional cases where the life of the patient is in jeopardy and the constant attendance of the nurse is necessary, a special nurse is sent to the home of the policyholder to remain constantly at the bedside. This, however, as stated above, is done in excep- tional instances only. It is the desire of the company to extend this service as rapidly as possible to all parts of the United States and Canada, and particularly to those points in the Southern States where the service is not yet in force. Ordinarily, arrangements are made with visiting nurse associations in the respective cities and towns to combine the nursing of the policyholders of the company with the regular work of the association. This is done to avoid duplication of effort. Where anti-tuberculosis associations are in existence and nurses have been installed by these to look after tuberculous patients, arrangements are often made with these to care for the tuberculous policyholders, provided the associations are in a position at the same time to give general care to policyholders who may be ill, but who are not afflicted with this disease. The table below shows the cities in the Southern States in which the service has been installed, the date of installa- 190 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH tion, the number of cases nursed and visits made up to the end of March, 1912, and the number of tuberculosis, typhoid and pneumonia cases and deaths : Service CITIES Started Mo. Yr. Nashville 7-ii Chattanooga ii-n Jackson ■ ii-il Knoxville lO-ii Memphis 12-11 Atlanta S-io Alexandria S-n Augusta 9-1 1 Baltimore 8-09 Birmingham 1-12 Charleston 6-1 1 Charlottesville 1-12 Clarkesburg Ii-ii Cumberland 1-12 Frederick 12-10 Fort Smith 3-12 Henderson 6-1 1 Jacksonville 1-12 Lexington 4-11 Louisville 4-1 1 Macon 8-11 Mobile 10-11 New Orleans 6-1 1 Norfolk 2-1 1 Richmond 4-10 Roanoke 12-11 Savannah 1-12 Vv''ashington 8-09 Wheeling 2-12 Wilmington 3-11 Winchester 9-1 1 No. Tuberculofcij i Cases Pneumonia '^^A )hoid of Dis- Carried -r^- _ j Cases Cases Cases missed Apr. 13 ""'^ DiBm' 'd Died Dism' dDie 399 28 13 36 2 36 232 19 3 8 50 4 17 2 172 II 2 2 22 •• 224 18 8 6 27 I 12 293 20 I •8 28 I 626 55 12 30 42 3 50 78 2 4 I 4 7 162 5 I 5 I 6 5,977 155 44 36 169 29 364 27 67 5 I 13 2 I 41 I 17 I 203 II 4 25 15 8S 6 •• 129 17 49 7 4 I 10 26 3 2 3 126 10 3 7 14 12 26 8 7 4 22 26 231 31 8 II 10 3 1,232 60 5 27 115 6 44 167 8 4 22 26 126 3 I 3 7 997 38 2 10 81 8 57 403 27 3 8 31 2 31 996 155 2 48 45 6 51 59 3 I 4 2 173 7 3 I 3 12 2,245 170 82 105 105 15 162 23 129 I 4 I IS 4 4 320 21 2 7 24 7 63 3 6 2 •• 16,024 891 256 355 630 88 729 42 As you will understand, service cannot readly be given by visiting nurses in contagious diseases. The company hopes, however, to give service to all cases of general disease, laying particular emphasis upon the cases of acute illness. In the belief that preventive work of the kind mentioned DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 191 above should begin as early as possible, the company has re- cently published a pamphlet entitled "The Child," which it is placing in the homes of its policyholders to guide mothers and expectant mothers in the care of their babies. This pamphlet has been specially written for the group of indi- viduals whom it is intended to reach, and will be translated in various languages to meet with the requirements of the large number of policyholders who do not speak English. The limited time at my disposal does not permit me to go into an extended statement of the work which the Metro- politan Life Insurance Company is attempting to dov I hope you will realize from what I have said that while pri- marily the motive underlying the company's welfare work is economical, and is hoped to bring about a reduction in the mortality of its industrial policyholders, there is, neverthe- less, a very distinctly humanitarian puiT)ose behind it. It is thoroughly realized that in this enlightened age a large corporation's responsibilities do not cease when it has mere- ly met its contractual obligations ; over and above this there are distinctly moral obligations, or, better, social obligations, which it encounters when it attempts to act as the represen- tative of millions of individuals. It is this sense of guardian- ship, of stewardship and of high social responsibility which the company is attempting to meet in the welfare work which it is doing and for which it asks the support of all organizations and agencies in the Southern States engaged in uplifting work. NATIONAL DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH. COL. J. L. LUDLOW, C.E., M.S., SANITARY ENGINEER, WINSTON-SALEM, N. C. Dr. J. A. McDonald, Managing Editor of the Toronto Globe, a notel publicist and earnest advocate of sociological 192 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH activities, in a recent address in New York City at the annual meeting of the Association of Life Insurance Presi- dents, in an appeal for universal peace, gave voice to the following expression : "Have you seriously considered the reflex influence of war on the physical life and moral progress of the Nation? Forget for a moment the romance of war stories, the appeal of war songs and the flaming perorations on the heroism and glory of the battlefield. Think rather of its biological reaction. Estimate the inevitable results of killing off in battle or by disease your men of high courage and devotion, or of segregating in military camps tens of thousands of the fit specimens of your young manhood. Judge what it means to breed a new generation from less than the best of the generation that went before. If like begets like, if the laws of generation hold and are inexorable, if blood tells, or, to speak more accurately, if protoplasm tells, will you gather physical vigor out of a generation bred from depleted vitality and diseased blood? "History tells what war meant for old Rome. The best of the breed fell in the wars of the Ciesars, and at home from less than the best were bred the fops and dandies whose generation meant the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It meant the same for France; the flower of the race were drafted into Napoleon's armies; they fell on the battlefield, they died in the trenches, they rotted on the march, and two generations did not make good the loss. We know what it meant for Britain. "Send us the best ye breed" was the insatiable call of war. The best were sent. They fell by the sand drift, on the veldt side, in the fern- scrub, and many of them left no sons to 'Follow after by the bones along the way.' Blood was the price of admiralty. Britain paid in full, paid with the best. The awful cost is seen today in the hopeless face of the common city crowd, and in the desolateness of the moor and glen, where once were bred races of giants and heroes. "And has America no experience, no warning? Men ask, sometimes pathetically, where are the men of heroic mould who gave distinction to statesmanship and literature and DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 193 life a generation ago. Where are the hundred orators of Boston, the new generation of poets and philosophers and public men, to snatch up and carry on the fallen torch that once lighted New England? The answer comes from the Memorial Hall of Harvard University with its silent voices. Like answers come from Illinois, from Indiana, from Mis- souri, from Kansas, from Kentucky, from chivalric old Vir- ginia. Six hundred and fifty thousand men of the North and four hundred thousand men of the South, the best the Union bred, went out in that awful slaughter, and not yet has life found in that loss a gain to match. "Tell me what has been the loss to this Nation of the blood and the life poured out in that, your one great war' It is not alone the loss of the men who were, but the still more unspeakable loss of the unborn heroes and leaders who might have been. The bounty-jumpers, the skedaddlers and the mercenaries went on producing after their kind and their breed are your grafters in politics, your plunderers in business and your vampires in social life. Is it any wonder that so many places are vacant or badly filled — ^places in business, in finance, in politics, in education, in the State and in the Church, where none but men of integrity and power should stand? "This, then, is my word to you, hear the call of the dead who fell on battlefield and died in hospitals and lan- guished through the ruthless wholesale murder of the na- tions. They call to you who stand in the place of honor that you should join hands to make wars to cease and to dig this insufferable burden of the world's sorrow once and forever out of the way." In thus portraying the horrors of war between nations with its resulting influence on racial development, Dr. Mc- Donald has painted a picture of another warfare which, to an audience assembled to consider vital social problems, must at once present itself as one of even more far-reaching results to the welfare and development of the human race and of momentous import to National and to State, — a war- fare of unceasing activity dating so far back in time that the mind of man can barely comprehend it, but growing 1^4 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH more and more intense as the gregarious instinct of the human race has been indulged, until in this age and in our own country, with our large and growing urban population, it involves problems of national welfare of paramount im- portance, a warfare in which the whole human race is in- volved and which has claimed its victims in tens and even hundreds of thousands where the warfare of nations has claimed its thousands, — the warfare of the myriad hosts of the invisible microscopic enemies to human life which is eternally waged against the peace, the comfort, the hap- piness and the health of man, with a resulting handicap to racial development that can be measured neither in figures nor in mental conception, which can only be successfully combatted through the organized agencies of public health activities. This is the -warfare which I would present to your thought and attention. The deterioration of a nation or of a race, or of man- kind as a whole, may not of necessity be measured in specific terms of actual impairment. In the design of the Creator, man is a progressive being, ever advancing in physical, mental and moral attributes in the working out of his final destiny. It may, therefore, in truth be said that every influence which tends to retard the normal development of the human race is in itself an element of deterioration of the race. And, by the same token, any failure to aggres- sively conserve that already accomplished, or to intelligently promote all the known means of normal racial advancement, may rightly be considered to be at least the equivalent of racial deterioration. To measure the development of a nation, or its lack of development, involves a problem of great complexity. The assets of a nation are widely varied in character and cannot be confined to the physical and material. It is the people, and the people alone, that make the State. No nation can be great and prosperous without loyalty from its citizenship. Patriotism and valor, backed up by physical and mental fit- ness, alone can save the State in many of the vicissitudes through which it travels in the race for national glory and achievement. DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 195 The glory of ancient Rome was due directly to the char- acter of her citizenship. When, through aggressive war- fare, patriotism and valor, as well as the physical and mental fitness, were expended in the heroism on her battle- fields, her glory departed (though the natural physical and material assets remained unimpaired) and a weakling among nations replaced her former grandeur. The real and effective wealth of a nation is to be found in the character and caliber of her men. Without men physically, mentally and morally fit, the value of all the so- called natural resources are greatly depreciated. It is only through the vitalizing touch of man that value is given. During recent years intelligent, patriotic citizens have given much thought and study to the problems involved in the conservation of natural resources and preserving to the utmost the natural elements of wealth to the use of future generations. Organizations have been formed to cultivate in the public mind a due sense of the sin of wastefulness and of wanton use of the essentials to human life and hap- piness that were bequeathed by the Creator to the purposes and use of mankind. Governmental policies have been in- augurated to both promote and pursue this purpose, and, to quite a considerable extent, it has become a fixed public policy. But of what avail will such a policy and its accomplish- ment be unless there are to be future generations who, through physical and mental attainments, shall be capable of applying the magic touch of intellect and brawn to the treasure of the land, forest, and mines, which, only when utilized and adapted to the wants and conveniences of man, can be transformed from simple, inanimate matter to po- tential factors of wealth? Whether future generations shall be inferior or superior to present generations has ever been and forever will be a present problem. It is a problem which is now exciting grave apprehension to many thoughtful persons. It is the great problem of organized society, and its suc- cessful solution is to be found in public health work to an extent equal to all other activities of civilization combined. 196 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH As public health work is pursued with intelligent and ener- getic enthusiasm and vigor, so may the successful results of all other lines of human endeavor for the progress and bet- terment of the race or the nation be measured. It is a dual problem of eugenics and euthenics. Breed from the best and nurture to full and complete development must be the guiding principle and practice of society or deterioration shall mark the history of the nation. Next to the primary instinct of self-preservation which is common to all forms of animate creation, is the instinct of procreation. In the case of man this primal instinct has been developed into a selective desire or dominant pur- pose. In races of men and of governmental units it has be- come a State problem of pre-eminent importance. In the minds of thoughtful men of intelligent races, and of organ- ized society, it is a recognized obligation of citizenship, with a responsibility of momentous consequences. Not alonq to reproduce numerically well, but morally, mentally, and physically fit is the object and purpose of transcendent importance to racial hopes and aspiration. In the Anglo-Saxon race the world has today the highest type of civilization known to modern history. It has a highly developed manhood of honorable intellectuality and of vigor and action — men of achievement and of acquisition, apparently increasing numerically, and it is hoped and gen- erally believed improving also in physical development and intellectual attainments. Yet Galton reckons that England at its best falls two grades below the highest intellect of Athens, and that England produces but one man of supreme eminence where the older culture produced two hundred. With the prolonged period which marks the unit of time in the development of man or a race of men, it is very diffi- cult to measure in retrospect distinctive advancement; but with the accumulated knowledge of man and his develop- ment, and of the sciences which pertain thereto, it is not an impossible task to provide against racial decadence and toward a higher standard of racial development. While it may be impossible to force a numerical increase in births of the superior and fit individuals, it is within the easy range DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 197 of public health accomplishments to protect such and de- velop to adult life, with health and vigor, thousands of fit specimens of infants and youths that are being sacrificed to the ignorance of hygienic laws and to the lack of public health activities. And it is neither impossible, impracti- cable, nor unreasonable to force a numerical decrease in births of the palpably unfit. The progress of man is the product of two very differ- ent, though closely correlated, agencies. The one is the hereditary imprint of generation to generation, a biological process of evolution, which marks the intrinsic character of man. The other is largely independent of immediate par- entage or the individual himself ; it embraces the change in knowledge, possessions, and acts of men, which is termed social progress, and determines the environment of individ- ual and collective man. With the development of the human brain, its capacity to think and to accumulate knowledge, and to hand down from generation to generation the results of every advance by means of oral and written tradition, and to translate ideas into science, social progress has been comparatively rapid, and the importance of providing mankind with a proper environment through sanitation, education, and good government has become a fixed policy of most civilized peo- ple. But whereas the unit periods of such social progress may be written in centuries, the biological factors in human evolution are measured by ages; hence the greatest human development that is witnessed by a single generation results from the environmental conditions which mark social prog- ress rather than through biological factors. The students of the science of eugenics see a fruitful field of action toward promoting a higher standard of phys- ical efficiency and resistance to disease in the human race, by some system of regulating marriages and untoward hereditary tendencies in the initial conception of human life. The advocates of the science of sanitation and of public health activities, sometimes referred to in its comprehen- sive conception as euthenics, in contrast with eugenics, would counteract the physical deficiencies of the human 198 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH race by providing such conditions of living environment, and promoting such living haibits, as to build up the indi- vidual and racial resisting pov\^ers of the human body to the attacks of its natural enemies, so prevalent in the form of microscopic life, and at the same time promote conditions that vi^ill tend to reduce the prevalence and activity of the germs of disease. While the theories of the eugenic school may be essen- tial to the ultimate betterment of the human race, and in- deed may be its one great hope of saving the human race from imbecility, poverty, disease, and immorality, yet for securing immediate relief from the excessive ravages of such diseases as scarlet fever and diphtheria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid fever, and kindred types so fatal to mankind, little hope is offered therein, except in so far as a higher average of intelligence begets a more universal respect for public health activities and a greater community regard for hygienic living habits and conditions. On the other hand, the practice of sanitation, used in its comprehensive meaning, offers immediate results, and had already achieved during a brief period of active promotion a vast reduction in sickness and premature death, with a consequent marked reduction in poverty, and perhaps crime, and has added vastly to the sum total of human happiness and national achievement. It has been said by an eminent authority that it is with- in the power of man to rid the world of every form of parasytic disease. Admitting this to be true, can the ad- vancement to the human race be measured when it shall have been done ? There is much in the recent experience of our own country that teaches that it can, and that the meas- ure of the progress to its ultimate accomplishment depends upon the intensity of the response to the call to public health. This, then, sounds the call to public health, and as this call to social service is answered so will the harvest be in the advancement and glory of the nation, the conservation of her resources and her advancement or deterioration as the life of a nation is measured. DETERIORATION BY NEGLECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH 199 And again let it be said there is no national possession that is reasonably compara/ble with the life and health and physical efficiency of its people. Again let me say that ex- cept through the touch of the mind and hand of man there can be no wealth in anything material, hence the true con- servation of resources of the State and of the nation has its beginning and its ending in conserving the life and health of its people, with the attending moral and spiritual develop- ment which will logically accompany a nation's response to the call to public health. As the advocate of universal peace among nations, who was quoted in the outset, would have you hear the call of the dead who fell on the battlefield through the ruthless wholesale murder of the nations and forever banish an in- sufferable burden of the world's sorrow by making wars to cease, so I would have you hear the call of 265,000 sorrowing mothers who each year in the United States mourn the death of an infant ere it has reached the first anniversary of its birth; of the 50,000 children, the hope of the country, who each year are made innocent victims to the ravages of diphtheria, whooping cough, measles and scarlet fever; of the 150,000 victims of tuberculosis annually at an age when life is dearest and when life and service is most needed by dependents and by the nation ; and of the 136,000 victims of pneumonia annually, largely from bad housing and unhygi- enic living habits. The large majority of all these deaths are not alone pre- mature but they are preventable through public health ac- tivities. In the correlation of sociological efforts, public health work must be given the place of first importance. Its reward is to promote that which is dearest to individual life and most important in its relation to all other agencies for the improvement of the race and the development of the nation. The penalty for its neglect is to largely negative the results of all other branches of social endeavor, and to accelerate the conditions inherent to community or national life, which, permitted to go unchecked or without effective control, make 200 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH for lowered efficiency of the individual, lowered standards of community achievement, and marked deterioration of the race or nation. V. NEGRO PROBLEMS The Negro and Crime The Negro and PubHc Health My Experience in Organizing Negro Anti- Tuberculosis Leagues The Negro and the New South THE NEGRO AND CRIME. WILLIAM HOLCOMBE THOMAS, MONTGOMERY, ALA. To confine myself to the time and subject assigned me, I shall speak in outline. I shall try to make no charge against any community or race. Some years ago, giving consideration to the cause of crime in the United States, I concluded that the best tests were found in the record of convictions for major offenses. The disregard of the highest personal rights and the spirit of the punishment therefor is more uniform throughout the States. THE SPIRIT OF LAW. Variations in the enforcement of a law are not so much due to climate, density of population, race, form of govern- ment, or length of governmental experience, as to a spirit tolerating crime. This toleration is primarily bom of un- limited opportunity for the acquirement of individual power. The process of adjustment in individual conceptions of absolute truth has brought a moral unrest to the American Nation. NEGRO AND CRIME. Lombroso said that were it not for the negro population the crime of homicide in the United States would be almost as rare as in the countries of Europe. I do not concur in the statement, for the negro composes only 12 per cent of the population. If we charge to them half the homicides committed (more than their proportionate share) there would be 4,500 homicides annually to the whites. If then we deduct the negro from the whole population, the whites would have a rate per million of more than twice that of Austria, Belgium or Australia, twelve times that of the 204 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH German States, six times that of England, Scotland or Can- ada, a fourth more than that of France or Japan, more than that in Spain, about equal to that of Italy and half that of the Federal District of Mexico. It will be necessary at the outset to get certain tenden- cies to crime in the mind's eye. Taking, for example, the commitments for homicide in the United States during 1904, the ratio per 100,000 of population was, for the several geo- graphic divisions: North Atlantic 1.4 South Atlantic 4.1 North Central 1.9 South Central 6.2 Western 4.8 If examined by States, it is noted that the highest ratio in any of the North Atlantic Division is found in Penn- sylvania (1.9), and this is exceeded by that of each of the Southern States, the lowest being that in North Caro- lina (2.9). Testing the question by the prisoners convicted of homi- cide, it will appear that it is a crime much more common in some parts of the United States than in others. The convictions per 100,000 of population were. North Atlantic 5.6 South Atlantic 21.3 North Central 8.4 South Central 24.5 Western 23.5 In proportion to population, the North Atlantic States rank lowest in number of prisoners sentenced for homi- cide, the highest being percentages in Connecticut, 7.6; Maine, 6.2 ; New York, 6.1 ; Pennsylvania, 5.6. The largest number of such prisoners were found in the Southern States, where the figures were: Louisiana, 36.3; Georgia, 33.4; Alabama, 32.1; Texas, 29.4; Mississippi, 26.8; South Carolina, 24, THE NEGRO AND CRIME 205 What of this record of homicide came from the negro is partially answered during 1904 by the commitment of 1,267 whites and 1,177 negroes. Since 88 per cent of the population are whites and 12 per cent are colored, a number of prisoners largely disproportionate to their numerical strength may be charged to the colored race. CRIME GENERALLY. What has been said of homicide may be taken as fairly true of other grave crimes. In all geographic divisions except the Western colored prisoners are more conspicu- ous in the group of major offenders. Of 149,691 prisoners committed in the United States during 1904, there were 125,093 whites and 24,598 colored, of whom 186 were Mon- golians and 715 Indians, or a ratio of one to five against the colored. John Koren says: "There is no escape from the conclusion that relatively the colored population con- tributes a large number of prison population in the States, with small admixture of colored as well as with States of the 'black belt' of the South," By way of testing the ten- dency of increase in crime, he further asserts: "The col- ored formed a much larger proportion of prisoners com- mitted during 1904 than of the general population in 1900." An examination of Table XXIV of the Census Special Report on Prisoners will show that of major offenders a larger proportion of the white than of the colored had committed offenses "against society," "against chastity," "against public policy," and "against property." The pro- portion committed for offenses "against the person," in- cluding major and minor offenders, is considerably largest among the colored, and so of minor offenses "against chas- tity" and "against property." Of colored, 13.4 per cent for homicide as against 6.6 per cent of whites; 18.4 per cent assaults by colored and 21.1 by whites; burglaries, 1.5 per cent by colored and 1 per cent by whites ; rape, 2.4 by the whites and 1.9 by the colored. 206 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH WHAT OF PERCENTAGES? Are the percentages of prisoners evidence of the extent of actvM criminal conditions, or of the extent to which such criminals are punished? In answering the question, it must be considered that ratios are based on whole numbers of prisoners "com- mitted" or "convicted," and no consideration is taken of the fact that the native whites have the administration of the law, the advantage of education and of wealth. The importance of the latter two influences is apparent to shift the punishments of the law. On the other hand, the negro is generally too impecunious to provide for and to prepare his defense and to prevent imposition of the jail sentence after conviction by payment of the fine and costs. UNIFORM ADMINISTRATION. It must be left to the psychologist to say what of these percentages are contributed by the method of administra- tion. Whatever of prejudice the competition of color or race stirs, whatever of inequality of opportunity, there should be no difference in administration by courts of justice. There is but one standard of administration in civilized government. It must be uniform. There is but one duty of the official, to enforce the law. There is but one duty of jurors, by their verdicts to enforce the law. There is no higher duty of citizenship than to see to it that the law is promptly and impartially enforced. If such is our administration men will appeal to the law with con- fidence and will not take the avenging of wrong into their own hands. All men will then come more quickly to regard the law as their law. NEGROES FAIRLY TRIED. My observation has been that courts try the negro fairly. I have observed that juries have not hesitated to acquit the THE NEGRO AND CRIME 207 negro when the evidence showed his innocence. Yet, hon- esty demands that I say that justice too often miscarries in the attempt to enforce the criminal law against the native white man. It is not that the negro fails to get justice before the courts in the trial of the specific indictment against him, but too often it is that the nptive white man escapes it. It must be poor consolation to the foreign- born, the Indian, the negro and the ignorant gen- erally to learn that the law has punishel only the guilty of their class or race, and to see that the guilty of the class, fortunate by reason of wealth, learning or color, are not so punished for like crime. There must be a full realization of the fact that if punishments of the law are not imposed on all offenders alike, it will breed distrust of administra- tion. Here is the problem in the philosophy of government to which the true historian will write the answer. I have the confidence in the sagacity of the native whites of America, that they will, as nearly as any of the ruling peoples of the world, find in time the right administration of the law to a heterogeneous people. PROXIMATE CAUSES. If I were asked to give two chief causes of crime, out of an experience of ten years as a trial judge, I should answer, "ignorance and drunkenness." Yet this is difficult to prove. DRUNKENNESS. Of drunkenness as a cause, two examples will suflSce for this discussion. Contrast the decrease in crime in Alabama for the "dry" year of 1908 with the "wet" year 1907. In the cities of seventeen counties with 201,900 population, in 1907, there were 6,637 arrests for drunks and in 1908 there was a decrease of 5,131. The arrests for all offenses for 1907 were 24,345, and in 1908 there was a decrease of 11,742. For example in Tennessee, I am informed that in the year 1905-6 your prison record 208 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH showed 1,350 prisoners committed. The "wet" counties, with a population of 601,622, furnished 851, or one for every 707 of population; the other eighty-four counties, with a population of 1,418,993, furnished 499, or one for every 2,844 of their population. No argument is necessary as to the effect of strong drink on the ignorant and on those not having learned the lesson of self-control. ILLITERACY. To trace the relation of illiteracy to crime on the predi- cate I have tried to lay is most difficult. In the first place, as tending to show this relation of illiteracy to crime, note that the agricultural population is represented in prison chiefly by major offenders, and that urban people have lowest percentage of major offenders, four times the percentage of literacy for the whites and twice the rate of literacy for the negroes as compared with the country districts. Do we see in this that the move- ment of life is from the individual to the social ; that mutual consideration of rights in the broad sense is true education ? Is not this tendency to crime shown in the large pro- portion of prisoners from the Southern States where are large percentages of illiteracy (South Central, 43.1, and South Atlantic, 43.6) ? Of such Southern prisoners, a large percentage is composed of negroes and the illiteracy among the negroes is four times that of the whites. Is not illiteracy and its relation to crime further shown by the fact that the negro prisoners were more youthful than the white prisoners; 71.1 of the negroes were under thirty years of age when committed, as against 39.9 per cent of the total number of white prisoners. Did not the whites have a better opportunity by reason of early edu- cation and did not the negro fall into crime before oppor- tunity or experience had acquainted him with the danger incident thereto. Is not the same tendency illustrated by the fact that in 1900, of the negro prisoners, 31.4 per cent were illiterate THE NEGRO AND CRIME 209 as compared with 8.7 per cent among the white ; of foreign- born white prisoners, 20.3 per cent were illiterate as com- pared with 4.4 per cent of the native whites ; and from the fact that there was more illiteracy among major offenders of which class there is shown more brutality and disregard of the rights of fellows. Is not the same tendency illustrated by the occupation of prisoners, where one-half (50.1 per cent) were from the laboring and servant class, 23.7 per cent from those engaged in manufacturing and 17.2 per cent from the persons engaged in agriculture, transportation and other 9ut-door pursuits. It is thus observed that as capacity elevated these to the higher class of occupations, the crimi- nal tendency was diminished. A remarkable general relation of crime to illiteracy is shown in the divisions of the Southern States of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina on the one hand, and Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas on the other. This comparison is based on the table of illiterates in the country districts to the prisoners confined for homicide on June 30, 1900, which shows an almost uniform increase in the percentage of convictions corresponding to the illiteracy. Percentage of tiomi- ftide con- STATE victions of pop- culation Louisiana 0363 Georgia 0334 Alabama 0321 Mississippi 0268 South Carolina 0240 Arkansas 0144 Virginia 0135 North Carolina 0131 Tennessee 0177 Negro per- centage of pop- ulation .476 Negro per- centage of homi- cide con- victions .0173 Per- centage of illit- erate negroes .611 .467 .0156 .524 .452 .0145 .574 .585 .0157 .491 .584 .0137 .528 .280 .0040 .430 .356 .0048 .446 .330 .0043 .476 .238 .0042 .416 In the second place, the relation of illiteracy to crime is shown in that higher percentages of prisoners are against 210 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH those who do not oivn property; and the larger percentage of dwellings is in those geographic divisions having lowest proportion of prisoners. Is not then the frugality of today a large part of the wise history of tomorrow? Does not the fixing of the habitat contribute to the responsibility of administration. Are not constitutions, statutes and de- cisions the customs and usages proved to be true in terms of time and space. Are not time and space, as Emerson defines them, "inverse measures of the force of the soul." In the third place, as tending to show the relation of illiteracy to crime, it is of moment that in the aggregate the proportion of single prisoners is more than twice as large as that of those married. This is true of each element of the population, except Indians and foreign-bom. Here is a basis of uniformity — the cry of the unborn for life. The relation of sex-control and civilization is fundamental. What is "control" but literacy of community-life and home- life. What is marriage but the moral growth of the an- swer in home-life to the cry of the unborn millions? PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. By way of practical application, let each trial court an- swer for itself the following questions : 1. Is the law impartially enforced as to all men ? 2. If not, does not the failure to so enforce it tend to cause the average citizen to regard the law, not as his law, but as the rule of some State or nation of which he has not yet become in the truest sense a part, or as the rule of the "bosses" or politicians. 3. Does not this distrust embolden the individual, in his quest for power, to demand as rights more than are reserved for him in constitution or statute? 4. Is there just cause for the average negro, the In- dian or the foreigner to still associate the law with slavery and to regard the court as a place where punishment is meted out to the unfortunate, rather than as the place where justice is dispensed? Would not general condi- tions be better if these classes of our citizenship could not THE NEGRO AND CRIME 211 only know but feel that the law of the land is their law, made and enforced for their better protection and not pri- marily for their punishment. 5. As to the enforcement of the law, are we properly imposing punishment by resorting to a system which sells the convict to the highest bidder for about the same wage as that paid the average white teacher in the public schools or twice that paid to the negro teacher? Was it ever intended that punishment should be for revenue? Is not the object of punishment the reform of prisoners, the protection to community and the deterring of criminals. That administration which more nearly ac- complishes these three purposes commands respect of all classes. If our methods of punishment are often mercenary and not uniform, they will make, either in fact or in spirit, the members of a club, society, sect, class or race, "harborers" of its criminal members. It tends to give to such classes the "fugitive feeling" less they be caught in the meshes of the law, and not the "feeling of security" under the protec- tion of the law. Dickens taught this when poor little Jo cried to the big policeman's orders, "I'm always a moving on. Oh! my eye, where am I to move to?" Is this yet the deep cry of many men, women and children in every section of the United States? If so, it should not be. 6. Without undue criticism of the courts, I will inquire if the exchequer rule, "that an error of ruling created per se for the excepting party a right to a new trial," has not done much to shake the confidence of the common people in the integrity of judicial procedure? Would not the liberties of the people be better subserved if appellate courts would adopt the orthodox English rule that an erroneous admission or rejection of evidence was not sufficient ground for setting aside the verdict and ordering a new trial, un- less, upon all the evidence it appeared to the judges that the truth had not thereby been reached? This would con- tribute to the taking of a broad view for the whole truth of the matter, and not carry jurists and lawyers, in every case, to the "Quest of Error." 212 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH NATIONAL SPIRIT. We must admit that the American people are not yet homogenous. A national spirit cannot arise so long as the clan-spirit distrusts the superior power of government. Witness Virginia's recent disgrace, and Tennessee's Reel- foot Lake trouble! Such distrust will only give way to a feeling of general protection and confidence that will result from the administration of the law alike to all men at all times. The enactment and the administration of the law be- ing largely in the hands of the native white man, the more is it his duty to have it rightly administered. Of every community, it is true, that in exact proportion as the laws are uniformly administered, there is developed that spirit of confidence among all classes — the governing and the gov- erned. In exact proportion as there may be an administra- tion of favoritism, there will spring up a distrust among all classes — the governed and the governing. Since government is a delegation of power from the individual, and law the arbitrary line between that col- lective and individual control, so is the uniform enforce- ment of the law necessary to evolve the individual interest and the clan-interest into a NationMl Spirit. In conclusion, may I say, in all kindness, I have tried to point to some of the weaknesses of both races, that each may remedy them. Will not the white race answer "the challenge to prove the superior civilization by a great degree of kindness and justice to the inferior races?" This, Mr. Chairman, is the message I bring from Alabama to the first session of the Southern Sociological Congress. THE NEGRO AND PUBLIC HEALTH. OSCAR DOWONG, M.D., PRESIDENT LOUISIANA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. At the close of the war there were approximately four million negroes in the Southern States. As they had a THE NEGRO AND PUBLIC HEALTH 213 cash value, their physical well-being was an economic con- sideration. They were comfortably housed and clothed and provided with plain but wholesome food. In sickness they were cared for and, to a degree at least, hygienic habits were made obligatory. Under the direction, often of the mistress of the house, the colored babies were given intelligent care. While these conditions obtained, this element of the population was not a menace to public health. But with emancipation there came a change detrimental to all. For a few years habits gained under the old regime persisted, but deprived of guidance and support, the negro was unable to adjust himself to a high civilization. He sank into a state of irresponsibility. Poverty forced many into dilapidated cabins. There followed a total lack of observance of hygienic rules. Food, poor in quality became the rule. This condition was con- ducive to the spread of infection, the lowering of vital force, and a high infant death rate. Among the ten million colored people in the South today at least one-third live in an environment that is a propa- gating condition of disease. In addition, unhygienic habits of living prevail. The average negro is content with squalid surround- ings. He does just enough work to keep him from actual hunger. He yields to every sensual impulse and passing emotion. He is fatalistic in tendency. Perhaps in the category of his limitations the most ele- mental is his lack of a sense of responsibility. Appeals are futile; compulsory equally ineffective. With such a basis it is difficult to determine what may be remedial. With no adequate reliable statistics we can offer only per- sonal observations and suggest such measures as seem practicable. From the sanitary viewpoint there are some common practices which may be considered controllable, hence points of attack. Promiscuous visiting of the sick is one of these. This is fostered by lodges, societies and other benevolent organi- 214 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH zations. In some instances they have been known to use force and epidemics have resulted. The lack of ventilation in lodge rooms and churches is a prevailing condition. This, together with the dust that arises from ceremonies incident to these gatherings, forms an ideal medium for the spread of infection. The practice of voodooism is much more common than we think. It has a pernicious influence. Because of the illiteracy and credulity of the negro ex- ploitation of fraud is easy. Untrained so-called doctors and midwives are the cause of much preventable suifering and doubtless many cases of blindness among children and diseases of women can be traced to their malpractice. In the past twenty years there has been some improve- ment in methods of living, but the negro still bears the burden of a sinister physical and ethical inheritance. Fortunately the pure-blooded negro is more immune than the white man to a number of common infectious maladies. On the other hand, the diiferent shades all are susceptible to tuberculosis. The lighter colored negroes also are peculiarly susceptible to the ravages of syphilis and gonorrhea. One of the gravest problems of the South is the control of these scourges among this irresponsible class. The injurious habit of sleeping in rooms as nearly air- tight as possible and carelessness in spitting are two ele- ments in the spread of tuberculosis which seem uncontrol- able. In certain sections in the South the infection is wide- spread. It is common for a whole family to be wiped out. Among these negroes isolation or care of the patient with reference to spread of the disease is unknown. Without segregation in these districts tuberculosis cannot be eradi- cated. The elimination of the vice diseases depends on the pas- sage of laws vital in the social structure and the enforce- ment of them by the health officers. The health regulation which makes these diseases reportable is wise and will aid some. The health department of each State and of the local community can be an effective force in the elimination of THE NEGRO AND PUBLIC HEALTH 215 the diseases menacing practices. Everywhere municipal authorities are willing to pass ordinances prohibiting these pernicious practices. It lies with the health officer to en- force. The same is true of reportable diseases. To be neglectful in this is criminal. It is a most vital feature of public health. These measures seem superficial, as indeed they are. That they will in the slow process of the ages gather in cumulative effect and help to bring about desired essen- tial changes must be their excuse. Only as they point the way onward toward a higher plane of thought and action are they really effective. The negro as a health problem is much more than a sick individual. The essentials lie deep. Poverty, irrespon- sibility, thriftlessness and lack of social conscience are some of the elements. These represent a chain of causation. Irresponsibility implies thriftlessness, which means poverty. Poverty implies squalor, vice and disease. That the race is an immoral people is conceded. This is a logical evolution from the experiences of slavery and the resulting condi- tions. For reform the ethical basis of the race must be profoundly changed. The negro must grow into economical stability before he can become responsible or thrifty, and this is hopeless so long as family ties are based on ani- malism. At present it is intelligent to attempt the control of such elements as may seem controllable. These are such as ob- tain in reference to all ignorant people, as well as the illiterate negro. There should be no escape from penal- ties attached to carelessness pertaining to reportable dis- eases. And punishment should fall heavily on all who spread willfully any infectious malady. A fundamental is the need of education that will fit the negro for environmental demands. All the social agencies have a heavy responsibility for the solution of this, one of the greatest problems that ever confronted a people. There is no precedent in history to help. It must be worked out step by step, but we may be assured that it is wise to begin with the building of an ethical foundation. 216 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Repression of environment is not the cause of jthe negro's lack of acceptance of civilization and citizenship. The cause is innate and racial. The evolution of the race through the ages is the only remedy. In health, as in other things, the negro will become a desirable member of society only as he rises in civilization. MY EXPERIENCE IN ORGANIZING NEGRO ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS LEAGUES. SURGEON C. P. WERTENBAKER, U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH AND MARINE HOSPITAL SERVICE. NORFOLK, VA. In the short time at my disposal I desire to give briefly my experience in the organization and operation of negro anti-tuberculosis leagues, and to offer some suggestions as to how they can be made effective. The subject is one of vast importance to the South, and no plan for the sanitary improvement of the South can pos- sibly succeed that does not take into account the negro con- sumptive. It is well known that the death rate from tuberculosis is nearly four times as great among negroes as among whites. It may therefore be safely assumed that there are four times as many cases of the disease among negroes as among whites in the same locality. In the South, where negroes are chiefly employed as cooks, waitresses, nurses, house servants and laundresses, the whites are brought in close daily contact with them, and are therefore peculiarly liable to contract the disease from them. As some one has aptly expressed it, the negro is the disease reservoir of the South from which our supply of diseases is being constantly augmented. In attempting to establish negro anti-tuberculosis leagues that were intended to embrace the entire country, I had in mind the protection ORGANIZING NEGRO ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS LEAGUES 217 of the whites as well as the benefits to the negro. While these leagues were aimed primarily at tuberculosis, they were also intended to teach the negro the essential princi- ples of sanitation, and to improve the health conditions under which he lives. In the early part of 1909 I was detailed by the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health and Marine Hos- pital Service to deliver two illustrated lectures on tubercu- losis before a conference of negro farmers held at the negro industrial college at Savannah, Georgia. It occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to start the move- ment for negro anti-tuberculosis leagues, for at that time none were in existence. I hastily outlined a constitution and by-laws, and the first State anti-tuberculosis league for negroes was organized at Savannah, Georgia, on February 25, 1909. One of the prominent features of the organization was a provision for a Vice-President for each county in the State, whose duty it was to organize a branch league in each negro church and school in the country, thus utilizing the church organization, which is, as every Southerner knows, a most potent factor in the life of the negro. Another feature was the employment of a large and ornate certificate of membership that contained, in addition to the certificate, much useful information relative to the cause, prevention and cure of tuberculosis, and instruction in general sanitation. The movement was taken up with avidity by the negroes in a number of States, and within a short time Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia had organized State leagues, with numerous branch leagues in churches and schools. Later Florida, Texas and several other States had similar organizations. It looked as if the movement would extend rapidly over the entire South. I had considerable correspondence with leading negroes throughout the country. The movement had the editorial endorsement of numerous newspapers. The conferences of State and territorial boards of health indorsed it as the best scheme yet suggested for dealing '218 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH with tuberculosis among negroes, and urged its members within whose jurisdiction it was a practical question to promote its inauguration and success. After considerable labor I elaborated the constitution and by-laws and adapted them to the use of the branch leagues as well as the State leagues. I soon found, how- ever, that though many leagues were formed, they did not know how to get down to practical work, so I prepared a "working plan" for the use of the leagues, and this and the plan of organization were published in the United States Public Health Reports, and reprints of them were sent to each of the leagues and to all persons who expressed a desire for them. Several thousand of each of these publi- cations were sent out, and they are still issued by the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service at Washington and can be had on application to the Surgeon General of that ser- vice. It was hoped that State and local health officers would appreciate the value of these leagues in assisting them to discover and handle cases of tuberculosis among negroes, and that they would encourage and aid their formation and active work. Up to this point in the history of these leagues every- thing had progressed rapidly and well, and the prospects were good for the accomplishment of results. Then came the inevitable difficulties always attendant upon such en- terprises. The negro is quick to join an organization and hold some office, but when it comes to carrying on the organization, and doing actual work, and especially the collection of so small a sum as ten cents a year from the member, it seems that he is incapable of doing so without outside assistance. We all know the difficulties encountered in trying to keep up the interest of people in such organizations, and that it requires fresh and repeated stimulus. The Public Health and Marine Hospital Service has no fund at its disposal with which to aid, or even keep a super- vision of the work, and it seemed hopeless to try to get an appropriation from Congress for that purpose. The move- ORGANIZING NEGRO ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS LEAGUES 219 ment did not receive the expected support of State and local health boards, and the work has therefore languished. But few of the leagues have accomplished much in actual results, though no one can estimate the amount of good that has been done in sanitary education. That some good has been accomplished is evidenced by the fact that a short time ago I was approached by the president of the negro league of Portsmouth, Virginia, and asked to deliver an illustrated lecture on tuberculosis before his league in order to stimulate interest in the sub- ject. He stated that for the past three years his league has been paying half the expenses for a visiting nurse among the negro consumptives in Portsmouth, Virginia, the rest of her salary being paid by the city. I also know of good work being done by these leagues in North Carolina, and I am led to believe that this is true in other States. Thus it will be seen that while these leagues have not accomplished the highest results of which they are capable, on account of a lack of support, they have, nevertheless, done something for the betterment of health conditions, and to this extent have justified their existence. What, therefore, is necessary to make these leagues an active force in health work? It is necessary in all such work that interest in it should be continually stimulated and encouraged. If State and local health officers in their re- spective territories will lend their aid and encouragement to the formation of these leagues, exercise a general super- vision, and lend them a guiding hand when necessary, I believe that much good can be accomplished. They will aid the health officer in discovering cases of tuberculosis in the earlier stages and in preventing the spread of the disease by enabling him to supervise their care, thus preventing new victims from being infected and preserving the health of both whites and negroes. It is also desirable to have an organizer who can travel about the State, organizing branch leagues in the churches and schools and keeping up interest in the work. I have been trying to find some broad-minded philanthropist who would bear the expenses of this organizer. The experiment 220 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH could be tried in one or more States in the beginning, and if it is found that results justify it, the work could be extended to other States. The attention of health officers, sanitarians and socio- logical workers is invited to the plan of these organiza- tions, and I will be glad to supply literature and other in- formation to any one who wishes to further investigate the subject. THE NEGRO AND THE NEW SOUTH. W. D. WEATHERFORD, M.A., Ph.D., INTERN.^TIONAL STUDENT SECRETARY OF YOUNG MEn's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. We are indeed living in a new South. The old struggle for existence has given away to a struggle for opulence. The other day I rode on the train from Salisbury to Ashe- ville, N. C. Just before reaching Asheville there is a very long and heavy grade that must be climbed in order to get out of the valley up into the Blue Ridge Mountains, on which Asheville is situated. Usually they have two engines to make this grade, but this morning they only had one. A fine engine it was, but the grade is very steep and again and again we were almost at a stop as the old engine puffed and pulled, and pulled and puffed slowly and painfully up that heavy incline. But after half an hour of that heavy puffing and pulling the train suddenly shot forward with ease and rapidity. We knew we had made the grade and were on the high levels of the Blue Ridge range. That, my friends, is an exact picture of the South from 1860 to 1900. A long, slow, toilsome, weary climb up the steep hill of economic recuperation, after the terrible holo- caust of the Civil War. In 1860, to make an illustration, the farm values in the South were $2,038,000,000, but in 1870 these values had fallen" $1,139,000,000, or only a little THE NEGRO AND THE NEW SOUTH 221 over half what they were in 1860. Slowly and painfully this amount climbed to a billion and a half in 1880, to a billion and three-quarters in 1890, but it was not until 1900, forty years after the opening of the Civil War, that our farm capital again passed the two billion mark and stood just 4 per cent above what it had been in 1860, $2,- 135,000,000. How much of suffering, toil, anguish of soul and heroism of effort these figures conceal none of us in this generation can fully appreciate. But the hill of bank- ruptcy has been crested and now our engine of economic progress leaps forward with increasing momentum. While it took the South forty long weary years to get back to where we were economically in 1860, between 1900 and 1910 our farm values have increased from $2,135,000,000 to $4,318,000,000, a net gain of 102 per cent in ten years. This is the economic miracle of the world — yes, we are liv- ing in a new economic South. We are also living in a new intellectual South. Only eleven years ago, when I began traveling through the col- leges of the South, most of them were wretchedly housed, poorly equipped, their professors poorly paid, and their enrollment very small. But eleven years has seen mar- velous changes. The enrollment of students has doubled, incomes have greatly increased, and a regular renaissance has swept over the college world, and the awakening in the public school system has been equally if not more mar- velous. Yes, we are living in a new South intellectually. But economic and intellectual improvement do not make a people great. They are a background and basis of great- ness, but they are not the essence of greatness. While we are great in these lines, there is another realm in which we are to make progress if we are to attain greatness. The test of an individual or a nation is not in the realm of possession nor in the realm of knowledge, but in the realm of relationships. It is not what we have or what we know that makes us great, but our attitude toward humanity. Our possessions and our knowledge are simply a basis for greatness, and the essence of our greatness must be in the attitude we have toward our fellowmen. 222 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH The most marked characteristic of the thought of the first decade of this century is a new appreciation of the value and sacredness of the person. That is the one thing that gives point and meaning to a Congress like this. If the person of a child is not sacred and valuable, then why all this fuss and miration about the horrors of child labor, about the pitiable conditions of delinquent and defective children, and the crying need for proper play life) for children. If the man is not sacred and valuable why should we have spent all yesterday morning discussing the evils of the penal system, the call for prison reforms, and the care of criminals so that they may be lifted out of their crime. A Congress like this has absolutely no meaning save in so far as we attach sacredness and value to person- ality. And when you say personality that means all per- sonality, it means the bad as well as the good, it means the defective as well as the efficient, it means the unat- tractive as well as the attractive, it means the diseased as well as the physically sound — yes, more than all these, it means the black as well as the white. If it does not mean this, then this Congress is a mere mockery, and we, as delegates, are sham men and women trying to play at make-believe interest in humanity. If we are interested only in clean children and not in the dirty ones, if we are interested only in good men and not in the criminal, if we are interested only in white men and not in the black men, then this Congress is a whited sepulcher and our findings a cowardly lie. The final test of every individual and of every nation is in its attitude toward persons, any persons, all persons. Measured by this test, are we a new South? Can all of the members of this Congress claim to be members of a new South? Immanuel Kant, in his "Critique of Practical Rea- son," lays down this maxim : "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means." In other words, we must treat every man as if he were valuable in himself, not simply as if he were valuable to us as a tool which we may use for our own aggrandizement. The most THE NEGRO AND THE NEW SOUTH 223 serious danger of the South today is that we shall, on this very negro question, lose our valuation of humanity, as such, because we want to use the negro as a tool for our own comfort. Eecently, in talking with a plantation owner, I remarked on the progress the negro was making in farm ownership. This man immediately took issue, because he said it meant a scarcity of labor on the big plantation. "But," said I, "it means better homes, more production, better citizenship for the negro." He was willing to grant this, but still opposed progress in ownership by negroes because it would probably take some good workmen from his own farm. He was not treating the negro as an end, he was treating him as a means for self-aggrandizement. In a small city recently a courthouse was being built and many of the white bricklayers and carpenters objected strenuously because negroes were given a part of the work. The objection was not based on lack of efficiency but on difference of color. Fundamentally, it was the desire to use the negro as a means rather than treat him as end in him- self. A bright, splendid negro girl recently went to school and learned how to keep house, how to make a home, and then married and began to make her own home. The white woman in whose kitchen slie had worked before she went away to school objected strenuously to the girl's making a home and living in it. "But," I said, "her husband is a good workman, he makes a good living, why should this girl not have the right to make a home? She is a human being, she can make her contribution to her own people by making a true Christian home." But my lady friend still objected that the only contribution that girl could really make to humanity was to cook in some white woman's kitchen. Now, no one recognizes more than I that the negro race, in order to advance, must become a useful race, must meet the economic needs it is now fitted to meet, but far be it from me to suppose that the one need of America is that all men shall give themselves to ministering to my comfort and pleasure. The supreme test of the South is now being wrought out daily in our attitude toward the negro humanity about us. 224 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH The question is whether we will be interested in him as a person, as a being worthy in himself, as an end, as Kant puts it, or whether we will value him simply and solely as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, and that wood and that water for the white man's use alone. You and I cannot keep another person in subjection without keeping ourselves in subjection. Booker T. Wash- ington has well said, "I cannot hold any man in the gutter without staying in the gutter myself." The South cannot take the attitude of despising the negro without implicitly despising humanity as humanity. The very foundation of all civilization lies in an appreciation for the value of the individual person. If we of the South allow our attitude toward the negro to be such that we undervalue humanity, our civilization can be nothing but a hollow mockery. The significance, therefore, of the race question in the South does not lie alone in whether the black man is mis- treated, but in whether we lose our ideals of humanity on which rests the superstructure of our civilization. A single illustration of this will suffice. Years ago men began lynching negroes for committing an unpardonable and unnamable crime, but the very fact of the attitude toward humanity which this lynching superinduced meant that negroes were soon being lynched for numerous others, and at times almost trivial crimes, so that it has come about of late that less than one-fifth of the negroes lynched have been lynched for the one original crime. What is more, it has come about that a great many lynchings are not of negroes but of white men, and for crimes absolutely re- moved from the one original crime which seemed to call for such a drastic measure, and hence we have a holocaust of crime in our section. The lesson is writ large for us: We cannot despise any one form of humanity without immediately lowering our ideals of humanity as humanity, and this is to return to savagery. The great testing of Southern life, therefore, lies in the realm of our attitude toward the man who may seem unattractive. On this terrible Gibraltar many a na- THE NEGRO AND THE NEW SOUTH 225 tion has dashed itself to pieces, and it remains to be seen whether the South can meet this tremendous test. The supreme race question, therefore, is not one of efficiency or inefficiency alone, it is not one of advancement or lack of advancement, it is one of personal attitude. The supreme question is whether we, the white South, will so value humanity as humanity, that we will have a kindly, sympathetic attitude toward the negro as a part of human- ity. This Sociological Congress does well to put in its initial program such a question as this, for an Old South cannot become a New South until every man, woman and child in that South has a value as a person, and not simply as a thing, as an economic tool or a piece of animal machinery. I call on every member of this first Sociological Con- gress of the South to begin to think of the negro as a human being, whom God has put here to be developed, ennobled, made worthy and useful, and through you I call on the whole South to see that the negro has a chance to prove himself a man. VI. ENEMIES OF THE HOME The Divorce Problem The Money Shark Business THE DIVORCE PROBLEM, PROF. CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA, MO. The problem of the family is by far the weightiest prob- lem before the American people at the present time. The family life determines the heredity and the early environ- ment of the child. From the family the child receives prac- tically all of the most important social possessions of the race, such as his ideas and ideals regarding government, law, religion and morality. Moreover, in the family, if any- where, the child receives his training in habits of obedience, service and self-sacrifice. Thus, the family gives the child its most important equipment for life.. It is charged by society with the supremely important task, not only of pro- ducing the new individuals in society and of caring for them during the tender years of infancy, but of training each individual as he comes on the stage of life, adjusting him to society in all its aspects, such as industry, government, religion and morality. If the family fails to perform its task of properly socializing the child, the chances are that the good citizen will not be produced. Moreover, the family life socializes the adult as well as the child, because in the family alone, in a majority of instances, does the adult find those conditions which call forth altruism in him in the highest degree, teaching him the value of service and self-sacrifice for others in society at large. It should be a self-evident truth, therefore, that the character of a nation's life depends to a great extent upon the character of its family life, and it may be added per- manent social progress in the moral sense is not possible without a wholesome family life as the chief generator of that altruism in society upon which moral progress de- pends. It would seem that the nation whose family life decays rots at the core, because the decay of the family life dries up the springs of all social and civic virtues. 230 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH A very important phase of the problem of the family, therefore, is the extent of its stability or instability. The whole efficiency of the home as an institution for the social- izing of both children and adults must depend upon whether husband and wife remain together or not. Indeed, the very idea of permanent monogamy is involved in this question of the stability of the family. A high degree of instability in the family life is inconsistent with the idea of perma- nent monogamy. The crux of the problem of the modern family, therefore, lies in the divorce problem, since divorce is the legal expression of an unstable family life. In the study of divorce statistics, however, we must not forget that to these statistics must be added a considerable num- ber of desertions and separations which do not get recorded in the divorce courts. Among the very poor it is found that the number of illegal desertions and separations in the United States is about four times the number of legal divorces. Desertion, in other words, is the divorce of the poor. Making allowance for this fact, it would seem con- servative to add to the statistics of divorce in this country about 20 per cent for desertions and separations which are not legalized by our courts. Now, what do the statistics of divorce show as regards the instability of the American family? In 1906, the last year for which we have divorce statistics for the country as a whole, there were 72,000 divorces granted by our courts. This was one divorce to every twelve marriages. At the present time, if divorces have continued to increase, as they have steadily increased for the last forty years, there are probably around 90,000 divorces granted annual- ly in this country. If we add to these the number of deser- tions and separations which are not legalized by our courts, there are considerably over 100,000 homes broken in our country every year. That is, about one marriage out of every ten at the present times proves unstable. One can scarcely compare the statistics in the United States with those in foreign countries on account of dif- ferences in the laws, but it seems certain that instability of family life peculiarly characterizes the American people. THE DIVORCE PROBLEM 231 In divorce statistics, at any rate, we lead all the rest of the world. In 1905, the last year for which comparative inter- national statistics are available, when the United States had nearly 68,000 divorces, all the rest of the Christian civilized world together had less than 40,000. In France, in 1905, there was one divorce to every thirty marriages; in Ger- many one to every forty-four marriages; in England but one to every 400 marriages. Even in Switzerland, which has the highest divorce rate in Europe, there was only one divorce in 1905 to every twenty-two marriages. In the United States, as has already been said, there was that year one divorce to every twelve marriages. It would be fairer, perhaps, however, to compare Euro- pean countries with our States singly. If we do this we get rather startling results, for in 1905, in the State of Wash- ington, there was one divorce to every five marriages; in Colorado and in Indiana there was one divorce to every six marriages ; in Arkansas, Texas, Kansas and Missouri there was one divorce to every eight marriages. In certain urban centers, indeed, the divorce rate is still higher. In Kansas City, Missouri, for a number of years the divorce rate has fluctuated from one divorce to three and one-half mar- riages to one divorce in six marriages. The States in which divorce rates range from one to every six marriages to one to ten marriages are so numerous that they may be said to be fairly representative of American conditions in gen- eral. These statistics would not be alarming, however, if we could be assured that conditions are becoming no worse. The question is, Whither are we tending? When the results of the first divorce census were published in 1887, showing that, between 1867 and 1886, 328,000 divorces had been granted in the United States in those twenty years, and that divorce had increased in that period two and one-half times as fast as the population, many people said that the next twenty-year period would show that the divorce move- ment had reached its height and that there would soon be a decline of divorce in proportion to our population. But when the results of the second divorce census covering the 232 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH years from 1887 to 1906 were published, they showed that, in that second twenty-year period, 945,000 divorces had been granted and that the number of divorces had increased over 160 per cent, while the population had increased only slightly over 50 per cent. For nearly forty years, in other words, divorces have increased in the United States three times as fast as the increase of our population. In 1870 there was only one divorce for every thirty marriages, but in 1900 there was one divorce to every twelve marriages. If the present rate of increase in the number of divorces continues, by 1950 one-fouth of all marriages in American society will be ter- minated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half of all marriages. Thus, we are apparently within measurable distance of a time when, if present tendencies continue, the family as a permanent union between husband and wife, lasting until death, shall cease to be ; and at the present time it must be said emphatically that there are no indications of an early cessation in the alarming increase of unstable family life throughout American society. It may be remarked that the most rapid increase in divorce in any section of the United States between 1870 and 1900 was in the South Central Division. In the South Central Division in 1870 the divorce rate was eighteen per 100,000 of the population annually, but in 1900 it was ninety-five. In the thirty years it had multiplied more than five times. In the United States as a whole in 1870 the divorce rate was twenty-nine per 100,000 of the population, and in 1900 it was seventy-three. We have already noted that certain South Central States, like Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, are well toward the front in their divorce statistics. It cannot be said that the great increase in divorces throughout the Central States of the South has been due to the negro population. On the contrary, there is abundant evidence to show that the increase was even more striking in the white element of the population than in the colored element. The rate of increase in the South Atlantic States, for example, was not much more rapid than in the country THE DIVORCE PROBLEM 233 as a whole, while in Texas, with its comparatively small negro population, the divorce rate multiplied six times within thirty years. However, it must be said that the rapid increase of divorce in the South has only signified that the South is catching up with other sections of the country in this respect. For a long time the Western States, including the Mountain States and the Pacific Coast States, and the rural New England States, have led the country in the number of their divorces, although, as we have seen, many of the States of the upper Mississippi Valley rank also now among the highest in their divorce rates. Never- theless, if divorce continues to increase in the South as rapidly as it has increased in the past forty years, the Central Southern States will soon have a lead over all the rest of the country in this unfortunate matter. The significance of the divorce statistics just given is much debated. They are often, it seems to me, interpreted altogether too superficially. It is said that divorce in American society is simply a protest against domestic tyranny, that it simply signifies relief from intolerable con- ditions, and that it is simply an incident in the process of securing to the individual the right to develop the highest and best in life. But there are many things which make such a superficial interpretation altogether untenable. The facts seem rather to point to the conclusion that our family life is undergoing profound modifications before our eyes; and that the real problem that the American people are set- tling at the present time is not the question of domestic tyranny, but rather the question whether permanent mono- gamy shall continue to exist in this country or not. It is unquestionably true that a larger and larger proportion of our people no longer believe in permanent monogamy as the ideal of family life. There are many who openly say that they believe in a "varied monogamy" ; that when people find themselves uncongenial, separation should take place; and that the law should permit divorce by mutual consent. Indeed, when we examine carefully the repetition of mar- riage and divorce by certain elements that figure in our divorce statistics, it may be justly said that the American 234 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH people have gone a long ways towards permitting this "varied monogamy," or, as I should prefer to call it, con- secutive polygamy. At any rate, repeaters in the divorce courts are quite as common as repeaters for serious offenses in our criminal courts. The real question before the American people, therefore, involved in the present instability of their family life, is whether they are going to approve or not the ideal of "varied monogamy" with divorce by mutual consent when- ever the parties to the family union find themselves un- congenial. That a large proportion of our divorces at the present time are already in effect divorces by mutual con- sent is beyond question. What little investigation has been made seems to indicate that in a very large number of cases husband and wife mutually agree that one or the other shall apply for the divorce. This is indicated also in the very large per cent — over 90, I believe — of uncontested cases. It may also be indicated in some degree by the fact that two- thirds of the applications for divorce are on the part of the wife, for it may be suggested that it is well knovsm that an application for divorce on the part of the wife is more apt to be granted by the court than an application for divorce on the part of the husband. The fact is that the authoritative type of the family of our forefathers has broken down. There is now no external authority to compel people to live together if they do not want to. Moreover, along with the decay of external au- thority in upholding the family has gone a decay in a large proportion of our population of the religious sentiments and beliefs which were formerly associated with marriage and the family. A larger and larger proportion of our population have come to look at the institutions of marriage and the family merely as a matter of personal convenience. The contract theory of marriage and the family dominates among an increasing proportion of our people. While re- ligious ideas and ideals regarding the family life have de- cayed, no sufficient ethical ideals have yet been found to take their place. American family life is in the situation, therefore, of resting almost wholly upon the ideals of per- THE DIVORCE PROBLEM 235 sonal happiness and convenience. The American family life is individualistic in its ideals, and as such it must neces- sarily be unstable, and so far as we can see increasingly unstable, as long as the individualistic ideal of marriage and the family persists. While I would emphasize that what is fundamentally wrong with the American family life are our ideals of mar- riage and the family, yet anyone with common sense must recognize also that there are other vast social forces at work in American society which tend toward the disinte- gration of family life. Modern industrialism especially has tended toward such disintegration. It has taken the wife and mother too frequently out of the home, left the home a mere lodging place, left the children to grow up on the streets and young girls without any adequate training in home-making. The results of the labor of women and chil- dren in our factories, in other words, has been to destroy the home and to send forth into society multitudes of un- socialized individuals whose whole ideal of life has been, not service, but merely to get the most that they could for themselves. Again, the growth of our great cities, especially, on ac- count of the manner of their construction, has left a large proportion of our population without normal homes. A normal home can scarcely exist in the slums and in some of the tenement districts of our cities. We have let our cities also be hot-beds of intemperance and sexual vice and these have reacted to disintegrate the family. There is little doubt but that our cities might be made clean and whole- some places to live, but at the present time city life along with industrialism is doing much to undermine a normal home life for our people and to destroy moral character in individuals. Again, of recent years the family and the home have received less consideration in general at the hands of the American people than many other phases of our social life. Business and industry have been uppermost, while home life and the proper rearing of children has been subordi- nated. All of these things put together, along with the 236 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH laxity of our laws on marriage and divorce, the laxity of the administration of those laws and the laxity of public opinion on those subjects, have undermined the family life in America so that one must wonder, not that the American family is in such an unstable condition as it is, but rather that it has survived thus far as well as it has. As to the social effects of the instability of the family, those have been already in a general way pointed out, but some additional facts might be given. It is often said by those who favor free divorce that such free divorce will prevent immorality in society. But it must be pointed out that this has not been the experience in other countries and ages than our own. In proportion as divorces grew in Rome, for example, sexual immorality of all sorts increased until Augustus had to promulgate a decree forbidding noble ladies to prostitute themselves. Weak family ties seem to encourage lax relations between the sexes generally and to destroy the ideal in society of the sanctity of the mar- riage relation. Again, those who advocate free divorce claim that such free divorce is for the benefit of the children as well as of the husband and wife. It is said that when children grow up in a family where the parents are uncongenial, where there is no love, that the demoralizing effect upon the children is worse than if the parents were separated. In order to investigate this point I undertook a few years ago to find out how far desertion and divorce were causes of the increasing delinquency and dependency of children in American society. I found that our reform schools and homes for dependent children were almost entirely filled with children that had come from broken or demoralized homes. The general concensus of those in charge of those institutions was that of the superintendent of the South Dakota Training School, who said regarding the inmates in his school : "I usually put it this way : 30 per cent from homes in which there has been separation or divorce; 30 per cent have no parents living or one parent only, who is not able to care for the child ; 30 per cent from homes where the child has not good influences and training; 10 per cent THE DIVORCE PROBLEM 237 from homes that might be called good, that is, the family has good standing in the community." Coming, now, to the statistics of thirty-four reform schools which sent adequate replies to my letters of in- quiry, I found that out of the 7,575 children in them, 29.6 per cent came from families in which there has been divorce or desertion; 35.03 per cent from families in which either father or mother were dead. Including a considerable per cent of cases which overlap these first two cases, the per cent of children in reform schools coming from homes de- moralized by drink, vice or crime, was 38.05 per cent. The statistics of four juvenile courts, dealing with 4,278 chil- dren, report that 23.7 per cent of this number came from families in which father and mother were separated by de- sertion or divorce, while 27.8 per cent came from families in which one or both parents were dead. In St. Louis, indeed, in the year 1909, out of 687 children under the care of the Juvenile court, not less than 400 had not both their own parents living at home. Thirty-two institutions for dependent children whose professed policy was to take des- titute children, whether orphans or not, showed that out of 3,595 children, 24.7 per cent were from families in which there had been desertion or divorce, while only 47.5 per cent were either orphans or half orphans. These figures should be proof enough to show that a normal family life in which the child has the care of both parents is absolutely necessary to guarantee the proper adjustment of the child to society; for all of the experi- ments in the proper care and upbringing of children in institutions have thus , far been, sociologists and social workers unite in declaring, failures. If the welfare of the child and future generations and the moral character of adults is bound up with the sta- bility of the family, then the question is, What can be done to remedy the present instability of the American family? If my diagnosis of the situation is correct, that what is fun- damentally wrong with American family life is lack of proper ideals concerning marriage and the family, then it is idle to expect that the remedy to any very great extent 238 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH lies in legislation and legal machinery. A stable family life in a free society must rest upon right ideals of the family. Now, the institution in society which is especially charged with the conservation of ideals is the Church. If proper ideals of marriage and the family do not prevail among the mass of our population it is either because the Church has failed to teach those ideals or else because the Church is failing to reach the masses. In my opinion, both of these possibilities may be in part true, but I believe that the former statement is even more true than the latter. I believe that a considerable part of the instability of our family life is due to the failure of the Church to instill into the young proper ideals concerning marriage and the fam- ily. The Protestant Churches in general cannot be said to have had, and do not even have at the present time, any definite program regarding the family any more than they have any definite social program in general. The voice of the Church is not clear and unequivocal in other words upon this most vital social and moral question. While the Church is the main institution which is charged with the teaching of ideals in society, it must not be forgotten that a duty rests also upon other institutions in this respect. Our public schools have almost entirely lacked definite instruction along social and moral lines. While the public school cannot give the highest and most vital moral training concerning the family, it can do some- thing. Children even from the tenderest years in our schools can be taught the importance of the family as an institution and the sacredness of all family relationships. They can, moreover, and should be taught the elements of sexual hygiene and morality. The home itself, however, it must be admitted, must give the vital part of this moral instruction. What shall we do if the home is already demoralized ? It seems to me that even here there is hope if we can get Christian and moral people to realize their responsibilities in the matter, be- cause imitation in society proceeds from the upper to the lower classes. If the Christian ideal of marriage in the family become thoroughly endorsed by your upper and edu- THE DIVORCE PROBLEM 239 cated classes, we need not fear but that the lower and uneducated will in the main follow their example. The trouble with the civilized world just at the present time is, however, that the Christian ideal of the family is frequently not endorsed by the upper and educated classes. While the problem of the instability of our family life can only be succesfully dealt with through the moral edu- cation of the individual, that is, through the formation in the mass of the young of proper opinions, beliefs and ideals concerning marriage and the family, yet legislation and legal machinery can do something to aid in this matter, and it should do very much more than it is doing at the present time. The lax divorce laws of some of our States and the still laxer way in which they are administered in our courts, divorce cases frequently receiving scarcely the consideration which police court cases receive, these amount to an attack upon the family by the State. We are sadly in need of uniform divorce and marriage laws in all our States. The National League for the Pro- tection of the Family and the Committee of the American Bar Association upon uniform legislation, have drafted uniform divorce and marriage laws for all of our States. As yet, however, the uniform divorce law which, in my opinion, is a model for the present conditions of American society, permitting absolute divorce for six serious grounds, preventing re-marriage within one year and practically preventing migration for divorce, has been, since its pro- mulgation seven years ago, enacted by only two States. It, as well as the uniform marriage law, which has just been issued by the same committee, should be enacted in all our States. One other suggestion should be made in closing, and that is that the organization, procedure and practices of the juvenile court should be carried over to special Courts on Domestic Relations, which should be established in all of our States to deal with questions of the relations of hus- band and wife, and parents and children. Such courts would effectually put an end to the present abuses in grant- ing divorces. They would also effectually aid in maintain- 240 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH ing the stability of the family by bringing about the recon- ciliation of the parties in many cases. The experience of the Court on Domestic Relations in the City of Chicago shows beyond question that such a court can perform a very great social service in maintaining the integrity of the family. While we should not expect that it can take the place of proper ideals regarding the family life, yet it can do much to straighten out domestic tangles and to get husbands and wives, parents and children to perform their mutual duties toward one another. I conclude, therefore, that this Congress cannot do bet- ter than to resolve itself into a committee of the whole to encourage the establishment of courts on domestic relations in all communities of any size in every State in our Union. These courts would not, to be sure, solve the problem of our family life, but they might do much to awaken social con- sciousness as to the importance of the family and thus indirectly they might do much to stimulate the Church, the home and the school to discharge their great duty of under- taking to reconstitute again our family life upon a stable and wholesome basis. THE MONEY SHARK BUSINESS. W. WOODS WHITE, ATLANTA, GA. Twelve thousand wage-earners and salaried men in a city of less than 100,000 population, paying from 10 per cent a month to 120 per cent per month for the privilege of borrowing small sums of money ranging from $1 to $200, upon security of salary assignments, endorsements, mort- gages upon household furniture, or other collateral, pre- sents a serious problem and one calculated to stir every thoughtful citizen and lover of his fellows. This was the condition that confronted us in 1903 in Atlanta, when the THE MONEY SHARK BUSINESS 241 grand jury of Fulton County began what, we believe, was the first exhaustive investigation of this business and its allies. They found, according to their report, homes swept clear of every vestige of domestic comfort by these finan- cial bandits ; they found men enslaved and treated as crimi- nals by the well-organized usurers ; they found hundreds of men had lost their positions through their malevolence; they found that the methods of these vampires unsettled industrial conditions beyond endurance ; they found that the domestic service of the community was seriously impaired by their cruel methods; they found that the "Money Shark," with all his cruel methods, represented the only means whereby this large body of our citizens could secure the financial accommodations they must have from time to time in small amounts. The "Shark," in his best form, is entrenched behind legal barriers erected by the dblest legal talent. His meth- ods of business are gracious in the beginning but remorse- less when he has sucked to the last drop the lifeblood of his victim. The condition of things set forth in the grand jury report of 1903 is not altogether peculiar to Atlanta. There is not a city in America of any size that is not infested with the civic, social and economic parasite, the Money Shark, notwithstanding the fact that many good citizens think their cities are free from this evil. There is one man who does a large shark business in sixty-five of the leading cities of the country. The misery that this one man causes is enough to stir a nation. The widespread character of this disorder is further empha- sized by the character of the letters we have received upon this subject from every part of America. Under these con- ditions we believe that the experience of Atlanta in dealing with this evil cannot but be helpful and suggestive to other cities in the grip of the Money Shark. The first method we undertook to apply to meet the conditions described in this report was a bill passed by the Legislature regulating the loan business and aflfording a larger revenue to the small lender than ordinarily pre- 242 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH vailed. We did this in the belief that they would operate under its humane provisions and thereby provide an agency which would meet the financial requirements of this large class of our citizens. But to our regret and disappointment the Money Sharks evaded the provisions of this bill by methods as dark as they were subtle. Subsequently, on discovering our defeat, a bill was passed making it a crime to charge more than a certain per cent for loans of this character. Under the last legislative enactment a protracted cam- paign was conducted against the sharks and 136 indictments were secured against them, but we were again defeated by skillful legal devices. At the conclusion of this campaign those of us who had been connected with this series of battles came to the conclusion that we must organize in our city a small loan company with a sufficient capital to effect a change in the methods and practices of the Money Sharks. This resulted in the organization, June 19, 1911, of the Atlanta Loan & Saving Company, under the "Morris Plan" copyrighted, with a subscribed capital of $50,000, to be paid in installments, made by some of our strongest and best business men and others interested in our fight. This fund, January 1, 1912, was further increased by additional sub- scriptions of $25,000, and will be further increased as the necessity arises. Within the limits of time allowed me I can only give you in part what we have done in Atlanta in our efforts to meet in a practical and sane way what we conceive to be the real problem in fighting the "Money Shark." On June 19, 1911, we organized the Atlanta Loan & Savings Company. On June 30, 1911, our capital was $10,825; on July 31, 1911, $21,675; on August 31, 1911, $33,770; on September 30, 1911, $42,737; on October 31, 1911, $47,150; on November 30, 1911, $49,737.50; on De- cember 31, 1911, $52,128; on January 31, 1912, $54,764.50; on February 29, 1912, $57,300; on March 31, 1912, $60,- 099.50; on April 30, 1912, $62,074. Since we began business we have made 1,023 loans, aggregating $130,787. In the same time we have re- THE MONEY SHARK BUSINESS 243 ceived 1,575 applications for $202,916. Of the loans made, 155, for $16,084, have been paid off. Loans have been made to men and women with the following occupations : Clerks in railroads, banks, postofRce, grocery stores, soda fountains, cigar stands, etc., to the number of 169; printers, 86 ; salsemen, 62 ; stenographers, 23 ; bookkeepers, 23; switchmen, 23; housekeepers, 23; mechanics, 20; rail- road foremen, 20; railroad agents (ticket, claim, freight), 20; lawyers, 15; engineers of locomotives, 19; insurance agents, 15; tailors, 13; collectors, 12; dressmakers, 11; telegraphers, 11; proprietors of businesses, 10; general office managers, 9 ; railroad conductors, 8 ; ladies' maids, 8 ; salesladies, 8; firemen, 7; dentists, 7; porters, 7; teachers, 7; contractors, 8; trained nurses, 6; car inspectors, 6; street car conductors, 6; doctors, 6; cabinetmakers, 5; newspaper circulation managers, 5; meat cutters, 5; bar- bers, 5; city policemen, 5; manufacturers, 5; washer- women, 5; accountants, 5; draftsmen, 5; day laborers, 5 specialty salesmen, 5 ; engravers, 5 ; preachers, 4 ; peddlerS; 4; carpenters, 4; shoemakers, 4; timekeepers, 3; musicians 3 ; grocers, 3 ; brickmasons, 3 ; milliners, 3 ; chauffeurs, 3 editors, 3; cooks, 3; chemists, 2; journalists, 2; flagmen, 2 levermen, 2; floorwalkers, 2; opticians, 2; book agents, 2 proof-readers, 2; druggists, 2; plumbers, 2; postmen, 2 weavers, 2; blacksmiths, 2; bailiffs, 2; candymakers, 2 elevator operators, 2; railroad yardmaster, 1; airbrake inspector, 1; construction engineer, 1; artist, 1; factory superintendent, 1; architect, 1; janitor, 1; waterworks in- spectors, 2; hucksters, 2; detective, 1; deputy sheriff, 1; dental student, 1 ; paperhanger, 1 ; all others, 196. Thirty-eight (38) of our borrowers have made their second loan. Five have made a third loan. Our loans are distributed as to sex and color as fol- lows. White males, 830 ; white females, 150 ; colored males, 26; colored females, 17. A moderate estimate of the interest saved our borrow- ers per month on account of "Money Shark" loans taken 244 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH up by our bank, is $4,200. In twelve months this would reach, in round figures, $50,000. A number were made for the purpose of paying the expenses of funerals; a number for the purpose of pro- viding for the expenses of an increase in the family ; a num- ber to make provision for surgical operations of one kind or another; a number to provide for sending children to school; a number to send a brother or sister or some member of the family to a business college; several to provide facilities for acquiring a knowledge of such pur- suits as hairdressing and manicuring, etc.; several to get some one out of jail; many to buy coal and wood or furni- ture on cash basis; to reclaim jewelry; to prevent fore- closure on office fixtures; to buy a cow; to send son away for health; to prevent loss of position on account of gar- nishment or presenting of salary assignment; to send for mother who is in the old country, etc. Have these loans been made with satisfactory financial results? you ask. Into our expense account we have charged everything — office fixtures, safe, printing and everything of this char- acter connected with the conduct of our business. Our total expenses up to the night of May 6 were $4,980.07. Our interest account was $10,311.10, to which we may add $422.05 in fines, making a total of $10,733.15. If you will recall the above statement of our capital stock you will see that in ten and a half months our results, from a financial point, have been quite satisfactory. DELINQUENTS. On last Monday night we had only 90 out of 1,023 bor- rowers who were in default on their weekly stock install- ment payments as follows: Forty-one for one week, six- teen for two weeks and thirty-three for three weeks or longer. Of course, in the large number of loans, such as we have, there must be some who fall behind because of sickness, death, loss of occupation, financial reverses or some other cause of this character. Of the thirty-three loans three weeks or more behind we do not believe we THE MONEY SHARK BUSINESS 245 have five loans on which there will be ultimately a loss of even a part of the loan. Our loans average, in amount, about $125. PLAN OF MAKING LOANS. Our method of making these loans consists of a printed application, carefully written out by one of the clerks in our office. The applicant and endorsers offered or sub- jected to an investigation by the office force and then pre- sented to our finance committee, which meets twice a week. If the case needs closer scrutiny it is turned over by the committee to some member of the same committee for personal investigation. This brings this member of the finance committee at once into personal touch with the applicant and enables him to get a good line upon the borrower's actual condition, and by a personal, helpful touch to inspire the borrower to deal frankly and fairly with us. This personal touch cannot be overestimated with this class of borrowers. They have been so persistently ham- mered by the class of loan agents with whom they have been dealing that they have little hope of a square deal from anybody and it is one of our greatest pleasures, as well as most profitable services to the community, to in- spire these men with the feeling of the brotherhood of man. We have not hastily reached the conclusions that the small loan company for the small borrower properly con- ducted is the principal agency through which a remedy for this widespread evil is to be corrected. Twenty or more years of study of this field of human suffering has led us to the conclusion that no legal enact- ment or criminal law, no personal fight in defense of indi- viduals involved is adequate or more than a temporary expedient. The wage-earner and salaried man must and will have, at even destructive charges, money under certain condi- tions. It is his right to borrow for his legitimate needs. His needs are quite as important to him and his family at 246 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH times as are the needs of a larger borrower. Don't over- look this fact. Properly handled our business shows them to be good borrowers. One of the greatest economic blunders of our times is the failure of those who are interested in build- ing our cities to provide financial institutions for borrow- ers of this character upon terms and under conditions that dignify rather than degrade.. We owe adequate financial facilities to the men and women who, by their brains, brawn and skill, underwrite our whole industrial and commercial life. We have noted as we have moved along in this field of study a few facts which should interest every man who loves his fellow. For example : The self-denial in the mat- ter of food, clothing and housing for the family enforced by the heavy usury charges against their wages or sala- ries have resulted in a degree of inefficiency on the part of the borrower that amounts to an enormous loss to the em- ployer. Ill-health, consequent loss of time, with the added cost of physicians and drug bills as a result of insufficient food and worry on the part of the hopeless borrower is an eco- nomic burden heavier than the ordinary man can carry. The practical social effacement, because of impaired con- ditions of this class of borrowers, is one of the saddest phases of this serious problem and one of the most prolific sources of social discontent. The methods of defense pursued by employers, gen- erally, against the wicked devices of the money lender only result in a more complete enslavement of the borrower to his brutal financial boss. What has been the effect of our business on the "Money Sharks" of Atlanta? There has been a reduction of interest charges by the sharks. There has been a practical abandonment of the criminal process in the collection of these debts, as well as a greatly reduced use of garnishment proceedings, so expensive and embarrassing to the wage-earner and sala- ried man. VII. EDUCATION and COORDINATION Education and Social Service Camp Fire Girls of America Coordination and Cooperation EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE. HENRY F. COPE, A.M., D.D., GENERAL SECRETARY, THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO, ILL. Today we enter on the age of the science of human sol- idarity. We are just beginning to think, not in terms of man, but in terms of manhood; not of the individual, but of society; not only of persons, but of persons as integral parts of a larger personality. What the Greek poet long ago dreamed we now begin to see — ^that there is a life in which we live and move and have our being, and that for us there can be no health in any of the parts unless there is health in the whole. A Sociological Conference is, therefore, today not a convention of professors of sociology, each anxious to aston- ish all the others with the baffling intricacy of his social theories, but it is a parliament of those who see wide enough and far enough to take all living in the terms of one com- mon life, to think of the fact that everywhere we are living as a society, and to know that we will never have right living until we know the laws of this larger social life, until we have harmonious and right social adjustment based on the eternal laws of life and guided by adequate motives for social living. The aim of such a conference surely is not uplift here, reform there, patching here, and mediation there; it is not a prescription counter at which nostrums are compounded to allay the pains and smother the aches of society. Its emphasis is on social realization rather than social reform. It affords an elevated viewpoint from which to survey the whole life of a great people and to seek to bring out of the conflict and chaos, harmony, coordination, cooperation and unity. Our educational institutions do not need to be reminded that they do not stand apart from social life, but they do often need to be reminded that they have a great deal more to do with its realization than any other institutions. Our schools and colleges are just entering upon the third stage ^0 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH of their development. The American colleges were founded originally to educate a selected number of young men for religious ministry, but they rapidly won their unique place and became popularized as institutions, not for the sake of a religious ministry, but for the sake of the American dem- ocratic ideal. The first great change came when, in the early days, our people saw that, from their point of view, the college was the chance to give to all the children of all the people those rights and privileges which democracy claimed belonged to all. Men said: All men have equal rights; therefore our lowliest toilers were regarded as hav- ing rights equal to those of the English gentleman of leisure. Therefore we would send the toiler — or, at least, send his son — to the college, where he might acquire the earmarks of the gentleman of leisure, and those marks which we can most readily give are those which are known as a classical education. The aim of the college was to make each man a gentleman by giving him that which was supposed to be the peculiar attributes of a gentleman — the ability to read a little Greek, to quote a little Latin, and to affect intimacy with peoples who were dead and buried a thousand years ago. We forgot that this classical educa- tion was a mere incident in the life of the gentleman. It did not make him; it sometimes came nearer to marring him. Perhaps we forgot, too, that the equal rights of all men involved equal rights to things far larger and better than the toys and trifles of leisure. We inclined to strive for the incidental and neglect the essential. We forgot that one might steal and defraud in Latin as well as in Eng- lish; that no encyclopedia of classical learning could keep the heart honorable, the ambitious clean and the hopes held high. That stage of our general educational progress came near to dividing us into two great classes — the favored and often inefficient few upon whom learning had been thrust, and the many who, missing the privilege of this culture and growing by toil, become cultured in the art of living, were likely to resent the assumed superiority of the imitation gentleman. As the classical ideals penetrated down to the public school, we began to see the unqualified idiocy of EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE 251 taking eight or twelve years of the life of each youth and spending it in erudition wholly unrelated to his future life and vocation. However, it would be only a cowardly act today to assault the now battered and disfigured form of common classical education. The second stage of our American educational history is very recent. Both school and college came to recognize their duty to equip all the children of all the people with efficient earning power, ability, vsdth the greatest ease and the utmost economy to society, to make a living. Voca- tional training is not so new as most of us think, but it has not yet become dominant in all schools. It means that in the public school, all along through the course, we will have regard to the fact that this boy, for instance, is not to be a gentleman of leisure, spending his days in alternation be- tween fox hunting and browzing amongst the Latin poets; but he is to be a farmer, raising produce for American markets, or a carpenter, a clerk, or a motorman. The school must, therefore, train him to make a living. The weakness of that system is that everlastingly there is held before the eyes of Aneriuan youth the ideal of individual success. It has told him that his business was to raise bigger crops, make larger profits, and live in a larger and finer house than his father. It tends to create captains of industry — a euphonious synonym for pirates of society. It accentu- ates individualism ; it makes the boy feel that he is one in the great seething mass struggling to get to the top, the frigid top, where only a few may stand, where every man's place must be bought at the price of the displacement of other men. In the college it makes every man keen for professional success. It tends to create the class of college men who would take their advantages in terms of oppor- tunity to exploit the rest of society. Under this ideal a man goes to state university to study law because he may there acquire facilties giving him an advantage over his fellows, enabling him to sit in an office and extract fees, truly for service rendered ; but not for the sake of the service rendered, only for the sake of augmented income. Our schools, and particularly our colleges, would thus tend to 252 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH become institutions for endowing the few with exceptional earning ability and equipping them with superior imple- ments for exploiting the many. Now, this must not be taken as an indictment of voca- tional training. Every man must be trained for his own work in society. The vital lack, however, was that this t3T)e of education was not training for efficiently rendering social service. The tremendous problem which faces our educational institutions is not that of being loyal to the past ; it is that of being adequate to the future. They are the greatest factors in the solution of the present problem of social liv- ing because they are the great schools of life. We live in an age which is taking education in entirely new terms ; to us it means not simply a routine familiarity with dead lan- guages and ancient history, nor even a smattering of mod- ern physical science and philosophy; it means equipment, training, habituation to right living; it means knowing what life means in all its richness, with the light of its past glory full upon it, with the promise of its present meaning before it; it means knowing how life is lived; it means so habituating men to live with other men that they do not need to consult a text-book on etiquette to know whether or not to stand on another man's pet corn or to steal his umbrella or his ideas. Our public schools are be- coming conscious of entering on this new function. We organized them in the United States in order to get all the children ready for college, ignoring the fact that less than one per cent of those who enter public school go to college, and less than three per cent enter high school. We con- structed a magnificent flight of steps, kindergarten, ele- mentary school and high school, with the college at the top of the flight, and never looked to see whether the top step connected with anything more substantial than space, or whether the great army marching up the first flight of steps ever would go to the other, or might, like the Duke of York, all come marching down again. Our schools have existed largely to teach college subjects, and the emphasis has been on the subjects. We engage teachers to teach EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE 253 Latin instead of to teach boys. A phonograph can teach Latin ; it takes all of a man to teach boys. Teaching Latin may have something to do with a language ; teaching boys has to do with lives. We desire not to save languages, but to save lives. We believe in the education of all the chil- dren of all the people, not so that all the children may have the immense relief and joy of forgetting all their lan- guages, including English, and the pleasure of learning new and common-sense methods and short-cuts in mathe- matics, but in order that they may be able to live their lives and serve the common good with the greatest efficiency and value. Public education ought to be the training of lives for public living. The one striking, appalling failure of our American life is just there — in our public enterprises, our social living. Is it not a strange thing that the very nation which has the most wonderful system of public education makes also the saddest failure of the business of public living? We can make goods to beat the workshops of the world ; we can make graphophones to beat Gabriel's angelic band — according to the advertisements — and we can point to more school houses and more school children and more college students in proportion to the population than any other people on this sphere. Yet, with all these schools supported by the public as part of the very machinery of the State, our State machinery is everywhere known as woefuly inefficient; we do not know how, or we seem to be unable to do great things or many things of any sort in a public way. The public enterprises of a city like London are more recent in their initiation than the birth of Amer- ican democracy, and yet they put us to shame. The same is true of every European capital, so far as civic enter- prises are concerned. Germany led in industrial and old age insurance; England follows; but where are we? Think of municipal art in Germany and France; think of city- planning in Europe. Do you say, but we are a young peo- ple? However, so are all these enterprises young over there. Then what of the greater development of public en- terprises in new countries like New Zealand and some of 254 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH the South African colonies? These people are proficient in public living. They lead in social organization. They solve the problems of sociology. Such statements are not a blind following of the custom of deriding America at the expense of Europe; they simply present facts; they call attention to the salient and most significant fact that, with the most highly developed system of public education, we neverthe- less have the least eflficient public living, public administra- tion and enterprise. Why is this? The difficulty lies in the fact that, while we have educational machinery publicly administered, it is not for purposes of education in public living, not for pur- poses of public advance or development primarily. It is the public education of individuals in individualism. There, I am convinced, is the very heart of our weak- ness in educational matters — that our present system of public education is organized for the education of individ- uals in individualism. We would cover fully half the causes of our present ills if we coupled with this the correlative fact that our churches have been almost entirely, until quite recently, developing individuals in an individualistic type of piety and for individual salvation. Individualism means social conflict, misery, waste, and at last anarchy and ruin. Anarchy is simply political in- dividualism. We wonder that we have difficulty in law en- forcement; that every man is a law to himself; that there is so little respect for authority, for public good, that, if left to himself, almost every man will throw ashes into the street and let his waste paper blow over his neighbor's fence. Is it strange that boys are lawless and men regard- less of social obligations when we bend all our energies to educating them to live as individuals without social con- sciousness? Democratic education must mean more than acquiring equal rights to privileges, equal rights to get and gain our own; it must mean common realization of equal duties, training in habits of living with our equals, and in the obligations of service. The present curricula of the schools is not social. It does not train for social living. When I point to the fact EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE 255 that a foreign city is so far in advance of our own in municipal improvements, in the machinery of social living, waterworks, gas, electric light, transportation, telephone, docks, music, art, recreation — all owned or controlled by the State — you say : Yes, they have a few people who can work out those plans. But we Americans must re- member that those few people have been educated for their jobs, and, since all the people must guide our plans, we must educate all the people for their jobs here. There are boys who have sweat blood almost literally over Caesar's bridge-building and over Roman waterworks who do not know whether their own cities own their water or buy it. Would it not be just as much a matter of real culture for them to study, as boys and girls in school, their own municipal water plants as to study the water system of Rome? Poor old Eneas had a terrific time getting home from Troy ; we who live in the suburbs and must ride home evenings sympathize with him. Might it not make just as much for culture if our youth understood something about modern transportation and modern travel and adventure and the cost of modern industrial wars? Many would get more from a time table than they now get from Virgil. The fact is, they get nothing but language drill from the classics; they do not get the classics; they get tedious mental gymnastics. Suppose we take the child in school and spend some of the time acquainting him with the facts of this social life of which he is a part. Give him more than civics, more than bare outlines of political machinery ; give the real factors with which he will have to deal as a member of the body social. We have made a similar transi- tion in another respect ; we once spent time on the heavenly bodies, and it took a tremendous wrench to introduce the subject of our own physical bodies — physiology. That was too practical and not at all classical. It was better to die a classical dyspeptic than to live a healthy man who didn't know the difference between Herod and Herodotus. Why not now take the next step — recognize that we not only live in physical bodies, but that we are part of the whole body social and spend time to make our youth acquainted with its 256 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH facts? It is folly to talk of the schools setting our feet on the facts of life if the only facts are those on which we will not have to walk. Here is the great fact of social need, social struggle, social living; this is the great lesson the schools must set themselves to teach. Next, all our schools, whether elementary or higher, must set our faces to the future. They are not the cus- todians of the past; they are prophetic in function. They exist to hand us the heritage of yesterday in order that to- morrow may really have a heritage. Their national duty is to lead to the greater nationalism. God pity the people where the teachers are mere routine hireling repeaters of lessons, where all they can see of their task is to follow the curriculum and draw the pay! When that happens the schools exist for the teachers, to give incompetents jobs, and to offer up child life on the altar of political jobbery. But the teacher in the college may offend against the life of youth with equal gravity, even though he care nothing for salary and only for his department, his specialty. He becomes that sad, pulseless creature, speaking the shibbo- leth of his department, living for knowledge and knowing not life, allowing hundreds of live, throbbing young people to pass through his hands and doing nothing to make their lives. We have over-mechanized our educational systems; they must be humanized and socialized. We must feel deeply what we all know — ^that knowledge passes away; it is not for itself ; it is but a means of life, and the aim of the school is that life, the life of all set in social harmony. It matters not at all what the youth has learned of the en- cyclopedia of science if he has felt no passion for life, if he has never quickened with a thrill for humanity, if he has never seen a vision nor dreamt a dream of a better, fairer world. If our colleges cannot turn out dreamers, prophets, men who have hope, and will not rest themselves nor let others rest till they are realized, our colleges had better close their doors. If the typical graduate is to be the blase cynic, devoid of aspiration, to whom all the mockery of life is plain, sneering at our visions and jeering at our en- deavors for a better world, then let us go back to our EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICE 257 fathers' narrow round of knowledge so long as we get their lofty uplook. But the colleges are not schools of cynicism; they are the homes of hope. They are the cultures of altru- ism; they are the places from whence come our seers and singers of the better social life. All their visions we must encourage, only we must ask for more. We must ask that the college not only gives the heart for the higher social life ; it must train the hands and habit- uate the life. These are our schools of leadership; from them come our leaders in finance and industry; from them must come our trained leaders in social science. The busi- ness of a college is to discharge to this day the debt it owes to yesterday. Every college owes to society a number of men especially trained for expert leadership in social wel- fare and work and all men trained to sympathy and service as social factors. And yet this is not all. The new kingdom of social realization will not come through machinery; it will not come through ordering and adjustment; it will not come through legislation. If we could make the whole social order de novo, with clean factories, just wages, ideal regulations all the way round, we would have chaos in twenty-five min- utes, and most of our old problems on us again in full force within a month. The kingdom comes from within; it is born in the realm of motives, ideals and volition. No man can be forced into it; he must will and desire to come. Here, above all else, is the special responsibility of our edu- cational institutions, including homes and churches and Sunday schools as well as schools and colleges, to train men and women to will the way of social righteousness. Educa- tion trains the whole life; it has to develop the power to will right; it quickens the emotions, guides the aspirations, deals with the springs of conduct. We will never cure our social ills until we cure our own hearts. Men are oppressed because we ourselves want cheap goods and others want big profits ; lives are crushed in poverty because other lives demand abundance and luxury. The times are out of joint because our own hearts are out of harmony. And they are out of harmony with the eternal laws of the universe. Man 268 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH alone fights against the laws of his world. There is har- mony in the grass of the meadow, and social shame and ill in the children of the city, because the meadow grass fol- lows the divine law and men seek their own devices and follow their own lusts. Now, how great is the folly of all our education if with infinite pains we peer into nature's laws and formulate them, if we spend years to teach chil- dren and youth the sciences and build costly laboratories, and yet never ask what do these sciences mean to us? Not alone what do they mean about ways of making money, but what do their great laws mean to living? If it be true that except a seed fall into the ground and die it abides alone, it is wasted, does that law mean anything to us all? Does it not indicate one of our fundamental social laws — the law of every life that we must each be sown as seed for the enriching of the future, that this daily dying in devo- tion, toil and service is the only way of living? If it be true that atrophy follows always on disuse, what does that mean for us but that all money, all means, all manhood must be kept in service? If in every aspect of nature we see the divine, eternal law of service, what fools must we be if, with all our learning, we do not teach to all our youth this lesson — ^that there is no other way of life in society than the way of service. Our education falls down not because we teach too much, but because we try to teach too many little things, and we forget the weightier matters; we fail to teach how to live and how to die in this greater social life. We teach the dust of yesterday and the trifles of today, and fear to touch the great facts of love and sorrow, of human need and joy, of service and sacrifice, lest someone should accuse us of senti- mentality. Education is in danger of the fatal paralysis of "fear of that which is high;" we are afraid to talk of life as love and service lest someone accuse us of poetical inclinations. It might better be a poet on a ditchside than a pauper possessing millions ; the poet would have the world for his own. Arnold Toynbee was a poetic dreamer who led the social settlement movement. Gordon was a dreamer who opened China; Livingston a dreamer who opened CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF AMERICA 259 Africa. Clara Barton made us taste the shame of war. Poor fools, men said; they never made money. No; they lost their lives and so found the larger social living; they have joined "the choir invisible." This is the lesson all our schools must teach us — ^that losing our lives in the life of all, we find life, life eternal. CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF AMERICA. LUTHER H. GULICK, M.D., PRESIDENT CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF AMERICA. The great popularity of the Boy Scout movement made a situation which seemed to demand a corresponding or- ganization for girls. This movement for the boy created the tangible possibility of the success of this organization, but has not served as its model. The Camp Fire Girl or- ganization has been planned with the girl definitely in mind; therefore the home has been the center about which the movement is builded. To teach girls to like domestic things, feminine activity must be made attractive. They must be awakened to the beauty and romance of daily life; achievement must be glorified. This movement plans to create a new interest in the home, in the office, in the factory or in the school- room by supplying the now missing element of poetry, ad- venture and emulation as a stimulant to achievement. This stimulant is to be supplied by a system of promotion to the higher degrees or ranks of the organization by proficiency in home craft, hand craft, health, nature lore, camp craft, business and patriotism. The impression which practically everyone seems to have gained is that the Camp Fire Girls is primarily an organization for the furtherance of health, outdoor life, athletics — an organization for having a good time with romantic atmosphere about it. That is all true, but that 260 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH is no more the real object than the clothing we wear is our real selves, because back of the search for beauty, romance, duty, health, there is a straight attack on what seems to the organizing committee to be the three most serious prob- lems ahead of our civilization from the viewpoint of women. The things which women have done in the entire history of the world during our lifetime have lost their status. The women of the world have been knovsm by their services to society and their recognition by society through their skill in the home. That is, the family was the medium through which woman came into her most exclusive relationship to the community. Civilization today cannot measure her nor her services to society by those fundamental standards. The home is no longer the great laboratory in which boys and girls are shaped in reference to their future relation to work and the duties to the world. Many of those functions, religion, education and domestic, which have always been the primal duties of motherhood, have been taken out of the home, specialized in on the outside. We have taken education and made schools; we have taken religion and created churches and religious institutions; we have taken all forms of domestic activities and formed schools of do- mestic science. Cooking to a large extent, sewing, weaving, dyeing, have all been taken away from the home; there- fore a new relation is being demanded for women; she cannot through force of necessity keep in touch with these things. Woman has now an obligation with reference to the entire community which is new; she must have a new status. The form of such an organization as the Camp Fire Girls must be one which recognizes the material we are dealing with. Unless the girls like these things, there is no use in it. So there is made a fundamental appeal to those things which we believe to be deeply important as well as interesting to girls — romance, beauty, form and ceremony. There are four orders to the organization — ^the Wood Gatherei, the Fire Maker, the Torch Bearer, and the Guar- dian of the Fire, who is the official leader of the Camp. CAMP FIRE GIRLS OP AMERICA 261 Any girl is eligible to the first degree. There are no preliminary standards which prevent any girl from join- ing. There are no vows or promises; only an understand- ing of the Law of the Camp Fire, which the candidate must learn and repeat at the monthly meeting, which is known as the Council Fire. "It is my desire to become a Camp Fire Girl, and to obey the Law of the Camp Fire, which is "Seek beauty. "Give service. "Pursue knowledge. "Be trustworthy. "Hold on to health. "Glorify work." She shall then be entitled to wear a green chevron on her sleeve. Two logs of wood ready for burning denote this first degree. A flame is added for the Fire Maker, and smoke is added to these two for the third degree. A Wood Gatherer is also allowed to have, if she chooses to buy it, a silver ring, the sign on which is a bundle of fagots. These rings can be had for a very small sum. This is not re- quired ; neither are the silver pins and bracelets of the other two degrees. There is nothing in the whole scheme whereby the necessary expenditure of money is involved. It is not an organization for rich girls, for poor girls, for working girls nor for girls of leisure hours. It is for all girls, with activities correspondingly elastic to fit all conditions. The aim is to do with a social organization exactly what is done with an Ingersoll watch. Create an instrument which will fit rural and urban conditions, which will work on the East Side of New York or on Riverside, which will work in Maine, California, New Mexico, Alaska — an organiza- tion which will be prepared to meet whatever conditions may arise in any locality. The endeavor has been to form a group so simple that it can be carried through by ordi- nary people under ordinary conditions. Whatever there is of costume or jewelry, it is intended, shall be either optional or of such slight expense as to be available for everyone. There is an official outdoor suit, an official swimming 262 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH suit and a ceremonial costume. The outdoor suit is com- posed of white blouse and blue skirt, and the ceremonial dress, which is made of galatea on straight lines, from patterns furnished by the national headquarters, can be made by the girls themselves at an actual cost of sixty cents. The wearing of the uniform is optional with the group or the indivdual girl, but is desirable because it tends to create an esprit de corps. After a girl has become a Wood Gatherer she meets weekly with her Camp and works on those things which will aid her to reach the next order — the Fire Maker. The candidate will further indicate her love and under- standing of the Camp Fire ideal by learning and repeating the Fire Maker's Desire when she has achieved the neces- sary number of honors required for promotion : "As fuel is brought to the fire, "So I purpose to bring "My strength, "My ambition, "My heart's desire, "My joy "And my sorrow "To the fire "Of human kind, "For I will tend, "As my fathers have tended, "And my father's fathers, "Since time began, "The fire that is called "The love of man for man, "The love of man for God." Before a girl can be Jaccepted into the second order — that of Fire Maker — she must be capable of doing or have done the following: "Help prepare and serve, together with the other can- didates, at least two meals for meetings of the Camp Fire, this to include purchase of food, cooking and serving of the meal and care of the fire." It is impossible to have tests which "shall include those CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF AMERICA 263 things which may be merely the extent of individual attain- ment. The tests given are those things regarded as neces- sary and important, not that having done the small act itself is the necessary thing, but as being indicative of direction. "Repair stockings or a tear, patch a knitted undergar- ment and hem a dish towel. "Keep a written classified account of all money received and spent for at least a month. "Tie a square knot five times in succession correctly and without hesitation. "Sleep with open windows or out of doors for at least one month." Merely the sleeping of one month in such a manner is no great accomplishment in itself, but is indicative of the fact that the knowledge of the correct mode of sleeping has been mastered. "Take an average of half an hour daily outdoor exer- cise for not less than a month." There is a great deal to be said in the manual of the Camp Fire Girls regarding exercise, athletics and other physical feats, but the object of these tests is not to prove the ability to run a mile in six minutes, jump five feet high, or anything of that type, but the real aim is to encourage the forming of a habit of an average half -hour a day exer- cise. Otherwise these tests are valueless. "Refrain from sodas and candy between meals for at least one month. "Name chief causes of infant mortality in summer. Tell how and to what extent it has been reduced in one Amer- ican community." In forming the ritual of this organization there has been the endeavor to secure relationship to practical things, that relation to be of such simplicity and clearness as to fit in with other things that will emphasize, but not run afoul of public prejudices. There is rather a popular prejudice against young women knowing too much about the care of babies. Worded in quite so crude a manner, many people would be shocked. The reason for introducing this 264 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH question into the Camp Fire Girls' study is the fact that infant mortality can be greatly reduced by cleanliness and pure milk, and can be accomplished by alteration of cer- tain habits with reference to this matter of cleanliness of a community. "Know what to do in case of clothing on fire. "What to do for a person who cannot swim and is in deep water, both in summer and through the ice in winter. "How to use surgeon's plaster. "Know what a girl of her age needs to know about herself. "Commit to memory any good poem or song not less than twenty-five lines in length. "Know the career of some woman who has done much for the country or State." In addition to knowing these things, she must present twenty elective honors, to be chosen from an extensive list, before she is eligible for the higher degree. The Torch Bearer is the next honor. A Torch Bearer is a girl who has organized and trained at least three other girls for a period of not less than three months in some activity. She must actually organize, and with the organ- izing develop a capacity for team work. This power girls rarely possess, owing to the fact that it is not as early de- veloped in them as in boys, who have daily opportunities for practicing it in their play. The rank of Torch Bearer can be held only by a girl who is able to give a practical illustration of this power. At first a girl is given a small number to handle — generally three — and after she has trained these three other girls in dancing, swimming or tramping, she is given a larger group, then several groups. After a woman has had training in work not generally available for young women, she becomes a power. The Elective Honors consist of attainments with refer- ence to health, home work, nature study, outdoor work, patriotism and other branches of practical knowledge. Each girl is expected to select from the list of Elective Honors those things which she can most easily accomplish in her environments. A girl living in Switzerland may accom- CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF AMERICA 265 plish a feat in mountain climbing which the committee will deem worthy of an honor. A girl working in a factory may be entitled to an honor if she walks to arid from her work for a certain length of time. If she be able to present a piece of work done exceptionally well while at her daily task in the factory, she is given credit. The object of these hon- ors is to encourage those things that make for power, health, social service and knowledge of the home. It is not the results as much as the knowledge which makes it worth while. It is that which gives it honor. The Elective Honors which relate to patriotism are counted the highest of the merited rewards. Included in these are: "Participate in organizing and carrying through a proper celebration of Fourth of July, Washington's Birth- day or Labor Day." Playgrounds and Fourth of July celebrations supply op- portunities where a girl may be an organizer and leader. In contributing some service to your community by en- couraging your neighbors to clean up their back yards is true patriotism and well deserves the honor it gains. "Be familiar with United States history as it affects woman's welfare. "Know the history of your own locality and what oc- curred on each historical spot. "Know the history and meaning of the American flag and that of the country from which your ancestors came. "Prepare plans to help improve the conditions under which girls work in your community; also that you have tested their practicability." The monthly meetings are known as the Council Fires. There is no fixed custom to be carried out at these meet- ings. The Guardian of the Fire, who is the leader, if she possesses an artistic appreciation, may make of these gath- erings a picturesque interpretation of each trivial and commonplace act and lead her girls back into some long- forgotten scene in the creating of history. Under the lead- ership of an ordinary intellect, they are scarcely more than the meeting together of a group of healthy, practical young 266 THE CALL OF THB NEW SOUTH American girls. The weekly meetings are for the purpose of working together and discussing diflSculties, that they may be overcome. The object of this movement is to "add the power of organization and the charm of romance to health, work and play." To do the same work over and over, day by day, is harder than going to war and being wounded. It is the slaying of the soul. There is no tragedy in life as terrible as having the soul wear out before the body. The first Law of the Camp Fire reads, "Seek beauty." By creating beauty where it is not, and appreciating it where it is, much of the dull gray covering of the common- place is removed and the significant acts of daily life reveal their real beauty and romantic form. This is the object of the ceremony, ritual, ceremonial dress and the awarding of honors. So monotonous is the daily work in the shop, school or home that some inner vision is needed to show the real beauty back of it all. It aims to divide woman's work into definite parts so that it may be measured and so credited; to put woman's work into attainable bundles; to promote among girls the power of keeping step ; to do team work, the power of or- ganization ; to develop among girls a new sense of responsi- bility ; to prepare her for that part of woman's work which is now being done by the community instead of by the home; to learn about woman's own financial affairs by keeping accounts; to know the economic conditions which are facing women, both at home and in the community, so that these may be more intelligently met. It aims to be so simple that it can be carried on by average people ; so adapt- able it will fit the needs of all localities ; so beautiful it will attract and hold the affection of girls; so useful in content that it will serve the needs of those in various organiza- tions working in the interest of girlhood; so timely it can really help in the readjustment that is upon us — woman's new relation to the community. This is the Camp Fire Girls, and these aims are basal to the present needs of woman in the world. COOPERATION AND COORDINATION 267 COOPERATION AND COORDINATION. JOHN M. GLENN, M.A., LL.B., DIRECTOR RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK CITY. In social work cooperation and coordination are fun- damental requisites to success, yet it is most difficult to secure them. Many social agencies seem to find it as diffi- cult as individuals to learn to love their neighbors and to remember that we are members one of another. When an agency sees only its own work and its own objects, and fails to look beyond its own limits for allies who can help to do some of the necessary things that it should not attempt, it does its work inadequately and generally becomes swamped by an overload. Many who need help are being inade- quately treated and kept in misery because of the failure of agencies and individuals who could supply what is neede"a to cooperate. Whether we are working for an individ- ual or for the improvement of conditions, there is hardly any case in which any one agency can do all or even half of what is necessary to solve the complex problems that pre- sent themselves. We are slowly realizing that social betterment is much larger and wider and deeper than a mere question of treat- ment of the poor ; it is dawning on us that to permit condi- tions of living and morals that sap human strength and spiritual life is a community scandal, and that neither com- munity nor individual responsibility can be met by merely giving material relief to the poor and contributing to social agencies. Let us take the simplest instance — the homeless man. He is by no means a simple problem. To give him a quar- ter in passing does him no good. It is simply a careless and mean way of evading responsibility and salving one's con- science. Its only effect is to encourage idleness. He needs as careful consideration and examination as he would get if he had some dangerous, contagious physical disease. His case will probably need, before he can be properly treated, 268 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the intervention not only of charitable agencies, but of hos- pital, of church, of government, of railroads, and perhaps of employer, or of friends or relatives. Cooperative treat- ment alone will insure the right solution. Read Mrs. Solen- berger's book, "One Thousand Homeless Men," published by the Charities Publication Committee, and see what can be done for some homeless men by sympathetic investigation and cooperation. Consider the dispensary patient. The doctor diag- noses his disease and gives him a prescription or some good advice, and he goes his way. In many a case the diagnosis is incomplete and the remedy ineffective, be- cause there is no knowledge of the conditions under which the patient lives nor any supervision to see that advice is followed. Often it is impossible for a patient to follow advice until his environment is radically transformed. One serious consequence is that patients frequently return again and again to the dispensary, and there is a great waste of time and money in unnecessary consultation and advice. We have only recently discovered the importance to hos- pitals and dispensaries of the social worker, who will sup- plement the examination of the doctor by an examination of the family history and industrial history of the patient and find out what other agencies must be called in to co- operate as allies in making the family whole and sound. Some of the best medical schools are encouraging their students to take up, under the direction of charity organi- zation societies, work with families who come to their dis- pensaries, so that they may become familiar with the social causes that encourage disease and with the agencies that can aid in eliminating these causes, as well as with the methods to be pursued in bringing about cooperation among these agencies. Take, for example, another simple case — a family consisting of father and mother and five children, all suffering from a skin disease that is curable. They get the best advice from the dispensary physician, but they do not know how to apply the remedy nor how to prevent contagion by thoroughgoing methods of cleanliness. For a long period they show no improvement, the children are COOPERATION AND COORDINATION 269 prevented from going to school, the parents are unable to do full work, and there are frequent visits to the dispen- sary. The unnecessary duplication of treatment costs the dispensary several hundred dollars. When the trained social worker or the district nurse is brought into touch with the family, the advice of the physician is made effective and members of the family learn how to take care of them- selves. Medical inspection in schools is growing apace all over the country. But it is rarely as effective as it should be because it so often consists merely of infrequent routine examinations of children to discover whether they have a few special diseases, followed, where necessary, by spe- cial treatment. There is no attempt to learn the family and social history of the child, to secure the cooperation of the parents by teaching them how to take care of the children, or to secure the cooperation of the city boards of health, or housing department, or the church, or the char- itable agency, or the employer to remove conditions in the neighborhood or in the home that make decent and healthy living impossible. How often do we find cooperation between health au- thorities and school authorities in spreading education about vital questions of sanitation and of public and per- sonal hygiene? Fortunately, it may be said of the South that no part of the country has progressed more rapidly and effectively in this direction, thanks to the sympathetic response that has been made by her people to the tubercu- losis and hookworm campaigns. Not only the public agen- cies, but private agencies and individual professional men and newspapers have come into close and irresistible co- operation to conquer these diseases. It is one of the splen- did and inspiring features of our present day history. There is no city, and probably hardly a town or village, that is not afflicted with unsanitary and indecent houses. Bad housing is generally accompanied with low standards of living and of personal cleanliness. It is not an easy matter to get rid of this evil ; it is necessary that the com- munity should realize that it is an evil whose consequences 270 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH are not confined to the spots where it exists, but that any unsanitary neighborhood is a constant source of contagion and danger to every inhabitant of the city. There is no one who may not be affected by the seeds of physical and moral disease that are bred in an unclean and overcrowded section and travel far so readily, so quietly, so quickly. There is no bad housing that cannot be eliminated by cour- ageous cooperation of social forces, public and private. The churches teach as a cardinal doctrine the brother- hood of man. They must face the grave social responsibili- ties that follow. Acquaintance and knowledge one of an- other are necessary to genuine fellowship. No church can afford to limit its knowledge and its benefits to its own membership if it is to live spiritually. Its members must learn to know what is happening without as well as within their own congregations and neighbor- hoods. They cannot claim to be righteous if they do not actively search out the evils that exist in their community and adopt the highest standards of work and responsibility, and utilize and aid all the agencies available in the combat against wrong and evil. In their treatment of the poor our churches are too ready to depend on material relief as the sole remedy and to follow an isolated, planless course. Many a person has been kept years in poverty and misery by easy-going, pittance-giving methods, where vigorous, patient action, founded on thorough knowledge of conditions and of other available sources of help of various kinds, would have ended the trouble and made the unfortunate person inde- pendent of aid. All too frequently a church satisfies its conscience by providing for its children food and shelter and a poor education, with a little religion added, in an asylum or so-called home. It will take children recklessly away from parents and relatives without any careful in- vestigation into the fundamental reasons or any search for resources which will relieve them by natural and normal methods. It shuts the child up for years in an institution where it loses the benefit of contact with other people, when a real home in a good family might easily be found; in COOPERATION AND COORDINATION 271 the institution it attempts to educate the child with inade- quate resources. It should not attempt to do what someone else can do as well or better; it should not undertake to fulfill the functions of the home or the public school or the charitable agency where this can be avoided. On the con- trary, it should cooperate with these agencies and give them support, and, if their standards of work are not high, help to improve them. How can the church ignore the question of child labor? Can a body of men which stands essentially for righteous- ness permit young children to be deprived of elementary education and put to work which is beyond their strength? How can the church keep quiet when wives and mothers work long hours that keep them away from their home duties all day and often into the night? If these evils are permitted to continue they will sap the vigor of the people. Their existence threatens the life of the nation. Both righteousness and common sense demand that church mem- bers shall actively aid in raising industrial standards. There can be no more powerful agency in creating a public opinion that will influence individuals and public officials. It is essentially the responsibility of the church to en- lighten the world as to every wrong and evil and as to their causes. Consequently the church must inform itself as to all human conditions and make them known in clear tones. Its members must bring themselves into alliance with every force that is reducing wrong and promoting constructive progress, whether religious or secular, public or private. It is a special duty of a church to set an ex- ample of and to inspire cooperation. Church members ought to be the most active promoters of practical co- operation. Through the efforts of a number of national social agen- cies, the South, along with other parts of the country, has been made conscious of some of the evils that beset it and has been inspired to a clearer vision of its social opportuni- ties and become eager to know how to utilize them. Not only has a better insight into conditions and a fuller appre- ciation of the proper means of changing them resulted, but 272 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH there has been a growing harmony in action. In many cities social, religious, commercial and municipal agencies have joined together in close alliance to study the needs of their respective cities. These unions have thoughtfully planned comprehensive programs for the elimination of bad conditions and the development of wise, constructive measures that will require steady and patient work for some years. These plans, if adhered to persistently, must result in more closely knit communities and a higher citi- zenship that will produce healthier, pleasanter, more beauti- ful and more righteous cities. Proper legal regulations by the legislative branch of government, impartial supervision and strict enforcement of law by building and health authorities, education in sanitary methods and development of higher personal standards through the schools, physicians, nurses, social agencies and churches are all necessary to complete community progress and the aid of the churches and the press in informing the public and spreading a sense of individual responsibility for community sore spots must be secured. In sympathetic union these forces will be irresistible, but coordination and cooperation are necessary — ^that is, each agency must fill the part it is best qualified to fill, and fit itself into a plan and program that gives full scope to each while uniting all as an army against the common enemies of the com- munity. VIII. THE CHURCH and SOCIAL SERVICE The Church and Social Service The Church and Modern Industry THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE. SAMUEL ZANE BATTEN, A.M., D.D., CIENERAt, SECRETARY, SOCIAL SERVICE COMMISSION, NORTHERN BAPTIST CHURCH, DES MOINES, IOWA. In these latter times a new and suggestive term has come into common use. By this term a whole hemisphere of interest and activity is opened before us. In a true sense it may be said that the term is simply a name for a form of activity that is as old as Christianity. And yet in a no less true sense it may be said that the term denotes a new application of an old principle and a modern illustration of an old spirit. In the complete program of Christianity there are four chief items: First — Evangelism ; making the good news known to all and persuading those who hear to believe the message. Second — Missions; giving the gospel to the peoples of the earth, that they may know the love of God and may enjoy the blessings of the Kingdom. Third — Education; the training of lives for the King- dom, that they may be built up in Christ and may be fitted for service in the world. Fourth — Social Service; applying the principles of the Gospel to the whole life of man and building up in the earth a city of God. Under one of these four divisions the whole work of men for the Kingdom can be placed. Along one or all of these lines the efforts of men must move as they fulfill the purpose of Christ in the world. No program of the King- dom is complete that does not have a place for all of these lines of activity. Each of these is vital in its own way; though no one in itself and by itself can bring 276 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH in the whole Kingdom. Where all are vital and Christian, it is needless for us to seek to establish any precedence or preeminence. The work of men for the Kingdom may begin in evangelism, but that work is not complete until it is crowned in social service. And social service, in return, promotes all the other lines of interest and activity and insures their largest success. At this time I am considering the fourth item in the Christian program. After what has been said I am sure that no one will accuse us of narrowness or will say that we are ignoring or minimizing the other lines of activity. But we are prepared to maintain that in the program of the Kingdom, Social Service has a vital part and a neces- sary place. What, then, is Social Service? Social Service, accord- ing to the generally accepted definition, is that form of effort for man's betterment which seeks to uplift and trans- form his associated and community life. As such it has a recognized and legitimate place in the program of the Kingdom; and as such it should have an honored and equal place in the church with the other forms of Christian in- terest. As such it is one of the natural and necessary ex- pression of the Christian spirit; and as such it is the friend and helper of the other forms of activity. I. The Nature of Social Service. There are three things that are implied in Social Serv- ice, according to our definition, which we may briefly note: 1. RELIEF. Social Service includes all those forms of effort which seek to relieve distress, to deliver the op- pressed, to rescue the fallen, to help the needy. It seeks to feed the hungry, to visit the prisoner, to nurse the sick, to restrain the oppressor. It finds warrant for all these forms of service in the life and example of Jesus of Naza- reth. The Master illustrates these virtues in his life, for we have the record : "He went about doing good." In his teaching he threw the most positive emphasis upon the THE CHUECH AND SOCIAL SEEVICE 277 duty of philanthropy and service; in fact, he showed that these are an integral and essential part of all true religion, at once its clearest expression and its strongest passion. With him the love of God implies the service of man; and the service of man is the final evidence of the love of God. Two incidents in his life make this very plain. One day a young ruler, a most exemplary and religious man in his way, came inquiring what he must do to have eternal life. The Master says nothing about the way to heaven and the things that men caU religion; instead, he shows the man his social duties and sends him away to a life of service. ''If thou wUt be perfect, go, sell aU that thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me." Another time a lawyer, tempting the Master, asks: "What shall I do to inherit eternal Kfe?" "\Miat is written in the law? How readest thou?" And the lawyer, answering, said : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with aU thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with aU thy might. And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Then, telhng the parable of the Good Samari- tan to illustrate the meaning of neighborliness, he closes the inter^-iew by saying: "This do and thou shalt live." With aU the power of his example and by all the urgency of eternity he emphasized the duties of philanthropy and service. In a sense, of course, good men. Christian men, have always recognized the duty of philanthropy and charity, and in all ages we find them building hospitals and opening rescue haUs. These things have always been accepted as an expression of the Christian spirit, and hence they have been expected of those who call Jesus Master. But Social Service lays great emphasis upon these forms of service and declares that they are necessary elements of the good life. What we call charity and philanthropy, all forms of relief and rescue, are not electives in the Christian life, de- sirable enough in those who would excel, but not required of the rank and file of people. On the contrary, they are the requirements and non-electives of life, and so must be accepted by everj- disciple in the school of Christ. For some time to come there will be need and suffering, sorrow 278 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH and wrong in the world; and so there will be a demand upon Christian men to fulfill this part of the Christian law. They err, no doubt, who say that Christianity is nothing more than an enthusiasm for humanity and a life of Social Service; but they err not as fatally as they who would separate religion from philanthropy and suppose that one can love God without serving his fellows. The love of God implies the service of man, and the service of man is the best expression of the love of God. Religion and Philan- thropy are the obverse and the reverse of the same thing. 2. PREVENTION. Social Service implies relief, but it includes much more. It deals with causes and seeks to prevent need. In these days a simple formula has come into common use: "Things have causes." This formula, simple and commonplace as it seems, is destined to work a greater revolution in human thought and effort than was wrought by the Copernican system of astronomy. Things have causes; all things have causes; crime, misery, poverty, vice have causes. These must be known; then bad and harmful causes must be removed and helpful and saving causes must be substituted. Social Service is, therefore, a new emphasis upon this aspect of life and effort. To illustrate : The Christian worker has always sought to seek and to save the lost woman of the streets. The Social Service worker goes behind the phenomenon of the lost woman and asks what are the causes that have cast her on the street. It may be defective home training; it may be due in part to an evil heredity; it may be that the young life was defiled in some permitted house of shame ; it may be that the young girl was a working girl and able to earn not more than three or four dollars a week, and so was driven into a life of sin in order to earn a bare living. Social Service endeavors to know all about these causes; and when it finds the causes it sets to work to change them. And so it is interested in the home and home training; it demands that every child born into the world shall be well born; it seeks to abolish the disreputable dance hall; it THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 279 pledges itself to change industrial conditions and to make it possible for every person to earn a standard living. Again: The Christian worker has always fed the hungry and cared for the sick. The Social Service worker who is instructed unto the Kingdom of God goes behind re- sults and deals directly with causes. He finds that poverty has causes, some social, some personal, some industrial, some subjective, some objective. He finds that many peo- ple fall into poverty because they are shiftless and lazy; but he does not stop there. He at once begins a new in- quiry why people are shiftless and lazy. Things have causes, and they are not wholly subjective, either. And he finds that many people in the present industrial order are unable to earn sufficient wages to maintain themselves and their families above the danger line. And this means that they are ill-nourished and weak, and their children lack vigor and vitality. Social Service seeks for causes that men may know what to do. And if it finds, as it is finding, that some of the causes are social, it at once proceeds to plan and labor for a more just and worthy industrial order. And the same fact obtains with reference to crime and sickness. Social Service has discovered that these things have causes, definite and knowable, and it seeks to deal directly with these. It accepts the dictum of President G. Stanley Hall "That every society has the number and kind of criminals it deserves." It finds a deep truth in the words of Brierley that what we call criminal nature is simply human nature badly handled. And so it goes back to causes and deals with these. Social Service finds that sickness has causes. It accepts the conclusion of the scientist that disease in most cases is due to a germ that develops in dirt and neglect. It knows that a child can be killed by foul milk or a neglected drain as certainly as by poison or a club, and it believes that one kind of murder is just as wicked as the other. And so it deals directly with the drain and the dairy. Charity builds a hospital and runs an ambulance at the foot of the cliff. Social Service builds a fence at the top of the cliff. 280 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH What is more, Social Service maintains that if it fs right to feed the hungry and to nurse the sick, to relieve the distressed, to rescue the outcast, to visit the pris- oner, it is just as right and just as Christian to create a social order where men can earn their daily bread, to labor and plan for sanitary tenements and clean drains, to change social conditions, to take up stumbling blocks out of the way of the people, and to deal directly with the causes of crime, such as foul literature, dance halls, suggestive pic- tures and overcrowded tenements. Social Service — ^pardon the paradox — feeds the hungry by securing conditions where everyone can earn his daily bread. It cares for the sick by keeping people well. It visits prisons by providing that there be no prisons to visit. It lifts up the fallen by keeping people on their feet. It knows that prevention is a good deal cheaper and easier than rescue, and it is just as Christian. 3. CONSTRUCTION. Beyond all. Social Service, in its best sense and its final effort, is constructive. It seeks to minister to human need and to relieve distress. It seeks to prevent such things as poverty, crime, sickness and strife. But it goes farther than this and promotes the construction of a worthy and Christian social order. It seeks to conquer evil by supplanting it with good. It aims to remove bad causes and conditions by substituting good causes and conditions. It aims to make straight paths for men's feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but that it may rather be healed. It seeks to build up from the very foundations a human and worthy social order. In fine, it seeks to uplift and transform man's associated and community life. Three things are implied in this which may be noted. Social Service seeks to adjust the relations of men in justice and brotherhood. Behind all the questions dividing men today, questions of finance, of monopoly, of labor and capital, of industrial conditions, are living men and human relations, and with these Social Service is primarily con- cerned. The Social Question, as it is called, is at bottom a THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 281 human question, for human lives and relations lie beneath and beyond all questions of material good and economic policy. There is strife and confusion in society because the relations of men are disturbed and broken. Peace and order will be secured not alone by a more equitable dis- tribution of the goods of life, though that is desirable, but chiefly and primarily in and through better relations among men. Since this is so. Social Service seeks to know what are the relations that should exist among men, and it then seeks to adjust these relations in justice and love. The Kingdom of God is not an anarchy of good indi- viduals. Not till the relations of men are adjusted in right- eousness and brotherhood, not till men are associated in just and loving relations, do we have a Christian society, the Kingdom of God on earth. The business of the Social Service worker is, therefore, plain. He is to gain a clearer knowledge of the relations of man's being, and then he is to promote such an association of men as shall secure a Christian social order. Till this is done his work is not complete; nay, all other forms of effort are but means to this great end. The great mission of the Social Service worker is to understand and interpret the relations of men and then adjust and righten these relations in justice and love. Again : Social Service seeks to secure for each soul the conditions of a full, worthy and human life. It knows that man's mental and moral and spiritual life has a physical, economic and social basis. We have sometimes forgotten this; we have forgotten that environment determines many things in man's life, both before and after conversion; we have forgotten that everything in the social atmosphere in- fluences man's whole inner and spiritual being. Social Service seeks to know what are the elements and factors that enter into the making of life, and then to enlist and subsidize them in the work of social progress and human redemption. Social Service is hence fairly com- mitted to the task of securing for all conditions that will make it possible for every life to grow up tall, and straight, and clean, and pure. For this reason it is vitally interested 282 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH in positive reform, in constructive measures, in attractive legislation, in creative influences^ It fights for the good rather than rails at the ill. It is interested in the Juvenile Court, but it is even more interested in the Children's Play- ground and in home training. It believes in breaking up the boy traps, but it believes even more in making straight paths for children's feet. It seeks to arbitrate the differ- ences between the employers and the employes, but it seeks even more such an economic order as will make all men full partners in every industrial enterprise. Social Service re- fuses to accept any social evil as a matter of course; it refuses to be stopped in its beneficent effort by any anti- quated doctrines of laissez faire; and it refuses to withhold its hand from any form of effort through any false notion of secular work. It knows that any effort which will help any human life in any way is the translation into deed of some article of the Christian faith. Finally, Social Service means the continuous and col- lective effort to build a Christian social order. It realizes that this effort is in line with the Lord's Prayer and is the realization of the idea of the Kingdom of God. It is not necessary here to consider the origin and the meaning of the idea of the Kingdom of God, the master- thought of Jesus' life and the ethical center of his teaching, but some things are very plain. The Kingdom of God in the Christian conception may mean more than a human society on earth, but it is certain that it never can mean less. This Kingdom of God, in the Christian conception, is all-inclusive and brings a blessing for the whole life of man. In his own simple and yet majestic words, "he has come not to judge the world, but to save the world." The Son of Man had a much larger and longer purpose than that of amelioration and relief. Jesus Christ did not come to men merely with relief, but a remedy. He did not come to save men out of the world, but to save the world itself. He did not come primarily to tell men of a heaven in the skies, but to bring heaven down to earth. The life of the Kingdom is here not merely to ameliorate the lot of THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 283 mankind, but to transform the whole order of society. The ideal of the Kingdom is the ideal of a- divine-human society among men. The life of the Kingdom is an all-permeating and an all-transforming life. And life, by its very nature, seeks to conform to its type and to change everything into its own likeness. Since this is so, the men who are seeking the Kingdom of God and are following the program of Christ are laboring to build on earth a city of God after the pattern shown us in the Scriptures. The Son of Man did not come — how plain it all is now — the Son of Man did not come merely to save a few indi- viduals out of the world, but to make men citizens of the Kingdom of God. He never called any man to a life of isolation, but to fellowship in a society. "The Bible," said John Wesley, "knows nothing of a solitary religion." We are interested in persons that they may become citizens of the Kingdom. We seek to win men unto Christ that they may become like him in character. But men are becoming like Christ just so far as they are in fellowship with their brothers. Christian men are to make a Christian society. The Kingdom of God never means anything less than a human society on earth; and so the program of the King- dom never contemplates anything less than the making of a Christian social order. And so we come back to our definition of Social Service and say that Christian men, following the ideal of Christ, are to seek to uplift and trans- form man's associated and community life. It is not necessary here to consider how far men have failed to set this object before themselves. Albrecht Ritschl is justified in the statement that "Since the second century nothing has less guided the church in its effort for social betterment than the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth in the sense in which Christ and his apostles used the term." However it may have been in the past, the duty of the men of good will is plain today. They are to accept the ideal of a Christian social order, and then they are to unite their intelligence, their faith and their forces in behalf of this great end. These men have the ideal of the Kingdom and the Spirit of Christ, and they are called to carry that Spirit 284 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH into all the details of life and to build a social order after the divine ideal. Individual work with individuals will forever be necessary; but collective effort through social action will be no less necessary. That is : As the Christian man sets before himself the hope of growing up into Christ in all things that Jesus Christ may be formed in him ; as a Christian man and woman pledge one another their love and trust, and unite their lives in the task of making a Christian family life ; as a company of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ associate themselves together in a church for the sake of the extension of the Master's Kingdom, so the people of good will in a community are to unite their intel- ligence and their faith in the effort to build a Christian social order. Christian men are to make a Christian com- munity; and the Christian spirit will not have its perfect work till it has created a Christian society. In a word, Social Service seeks to make Jesus Christ a FACT in the social life of the world. II. The Place of Social Service. Social Service is not the whole of Christianity; but Social Service is an essential part of Christianity. Social Service is not an isolated and independent form of effort, but is vitally related to all other forms of activity. For one thing. Social Service is Christian work. In all things the Son of Man is to be our Master and Guide; and both his life and teaching must be taken into consid- eration. To enter into his thought and to work in har- mony with his purpose — this for all time to come will be the way of life and power. The Kingdom of God brings a blessing for the whole life of man. This is so plain that no one can mistake it. In the Lord's Prayer men ask that God's name may be hallowed, that God's Kingdom may come, and that God's will may be done on earth as in heaven. Then implied and involved in this there is daily bread for all, the forgiveness of sins and freedom from bondage, the removal of temptation and the deliverance from evil. The Son of Man, who has come THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 285 to announce the Kingdom of God, has come to bless the whole life of man. From the Gospels we learn that he was interested in man, in the whole man, and he sought to help men wherever they needed help. He worked for man, for the whole man, and he never made any distinction in his work for man; he never spoke of work for man's soul as spiritual work and work for man's body as secular work; in fact, such distinctions as secular and spiritual he did not know and would not understand. He helped men wherever they needed help, and he considered one kind of work just as divine as the other. He was the Physician healing sick and suffering bodies; he was the Philanthropist providing bread for hungry men; he was the Friend of man, com- forting the troubled and sorrowing ; he was the Good Shep- herd, seeking the lost and leading them back into green pastures; he was the Reformer, denouncing injustice and correcting" great abuses; he was the Teacher, training men in the way of life and the art of service. In a real sense it may be said that Jesus was just as much interested in the bodies as the souls of men; perhaps it is more correct to say that he was interested in man, the whole man, and so he worked for man ; and anything done for man was divine work and along the line of his interest. In the words of the loving disciple who knew him well, "He went about doing good." Second — ^Social Service aids all other forms of Christian activity. Life is all one piece. To help man at one point is to help him at all points. In a general way Social Service in helping man aids all other forms of Christian activity. But there are some special and definite ways in which it promotes all other forms of service. Social Service, in seeking to uplift and transform man's associated and community life, is aiding most directly and potently the evangelist, the missionary and the teacher. The Christian life, we may admit, can be lived in the most adverse circumstances. Men may be won unto Christ and transformed in life even in city slums. But the best of men find it difficult enough to preserve their spiritual health under the very best conditions. How much more unlikely 286 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH are weak and immature Christians to preserve their in- tegrity when all the conditions are against them. Environ- ment determines many things in life, both before and after conversion. There are boys and girls in every community grow^ing up in conditions w^hich practically make impossi- ble for them a clean and virtuous life. The grace of mod- esty is brushed from the soul of the little girl before she has ever learned the meaning of purity, and the boy has become a rogue before he knew the value of honesty. This is not all, but the spiritual life has a physical basis, and it flourishes in so far as it has the soil in vs^hich to grow. To live a strong, healthy, vigorous, normal life, a man must have sufficient oxygen for his lungs and proper food for his body. We say it reverently, but not even the grace of God can keep a man strong and devoted without sufficient pure air and nourishing food. Social Service recognizes the fact that the spiritual life has a physical basis, and it makes provision for that basis. It realizes that environ- ment and atmosphere determine a hundred things in life, both before and after conversion, and so it endeavors to secure for each life the best conditions possible. And Social Service most directly and vitally assists the missionary in his work. What is the most serious handi- cap and hindrance today that the missionary encounters in China and India, in Japan and Africa? It is the social, the industrial, the political conditions in Philadelphia and New York, Chicago and London, Paris and Sari Francisco. Tammany Hall is a familiar name to the people of India; Chicago's Levee causes men to hiss in Turkey; the "Phila- delphia ring" makes men sneer in Peking; Boston rum makes people in Africa scoff at Christendom. "Why do you come to us?" men ask the missionaries. "Why do you not stay at home and make your own cities better? Look at London, your Christian city with one-third of the people dying in some public institution, an almshouse, a prison or a hospital. Look at New York City with ten per cent of its burials in Potter's field. Leave us alone till you have some- thing better than we. Get a better brand of religion before you export it," THE CHUECH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 287 This is not all, but our paganism at home is blighting the paganism of the heathen world. England is slowly- seeking to atone for the unspeakable crime of forcing opium upon China; but we have not yet begun to repent of our crime of forcing rum and beer upon Africa and the Philip- pines. Some years ago Bishop Hartzell declared to a friend of mine that many times, when he saw the havoc wrought by rum, he was tempted to say that the Dark Con- tinent would be better oif if it never had seen the face of a white man. Some years ago Keshub Chunder Sen de- clared that for every Christian England has made in India she has made a hundred drunkards. Today in Africa, while the missionary with his Bible is making one Christian, the rum dealer with his bottle is making a score of alcoholics. There is one duty which in a way overshadows all others: We as a people must see to it that the impact of Christendom upon heathendom shall be helpful, and not harmful. Heathendom has vices enough of its oAvn with- out borrowing any from Christendom. I think sometimes that the best place to do foreign missionary work is in Washington and London, Berlin and Paris. This we say: That the men who are fighting the demons of graft and drink, corruption and death in this land are making it easier for the nations of the earth to believe that our Christ is the Savior of the world. And, with reference to education, it may be said that a large part of our work consists in cre- ating such an atmosphere as shall induce a right course of conduct. The student of the times is profoundly impressed with the magnitude of the problems that now press for solu- tion. He is profoundly impressed with the urgent duty of massing all the forces of righteousness at home for a gen- eral advance upon the works of darkness. The time has come for all who believe in Jesus Christ to unite in the effort to cast some of the demons out of our civilization. The time has come for all who pray, "Father in heaven, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven," to strike hands in a determined campaign to make Jesus Christ a FACT in the social life of the world. The time 288 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH has come for us to apply the principles of the Gospel to the whole life of man, personal, social, economic, industrial, political, international. For the sake of Christ, we must undertake this work. For the sake of the nations, we must accept this commission. Third — Social Service is Christian in method. Accord- ing to the Gospel record, the activity of Jesus was mani- fested in three directions: He preached the good news of the Kingdom, he helped the needy, and he cast out demons. To his disciples he gave the charge and promise: "The works that I do shall ye also do, and greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father." Twice, at least, he sent out companies of disciples to extend his work, and in both cases the directions are substantially the same. They are to preach, saying: The Kingdom of God is at hand; to heal the sick and to cast out demons. (Matt. 10: 1-8; Luke 10:1-10.) It may be noted that the disciples ful- filled this threefold ministry, and they so reported to the Master. The first item in this commission the disciples in all ages have accepted, and in a way they have sought to fulfill it. In all generations there has been a succession of evan- gelists and preachers, whose calling has been honored and whose work has been successful. The second and third items in the commission the disciples generally have not accepted and have not fulfilled. And yet these are no less a part of Christ's program and are no less vital in the prog- ress of the kingdom. Preaching the Gospel is one of the divine means of extending the Kingdom, but it is not the only means; the other means are just as vital and just as Christian. It is just as important that men cast out demons and take up stumbling blocks as that they preach the Gos- pel to men and women. It is just as Christian to make straight paths for men's feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, and to secure for all the conditions of a human and healthful life, as to teach men the Bible and to seek the salvation of their souls. In all times we have honored the work of the preacher, and we have done well. Preaching is a divine means for winning the world THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 289 unto God; but it is not the only or exclusive way. The apostle mentions the various workers given by the Christ to his church: Apostles, prophets, teachers, workers, gifts of healing, helpers, governments, tongues. (I Cor. 12: 28-30 ; Eph. 4 :9-14.) It is time that we have done with the notion that preaching is the only method of making the Kingdom, and that the preacher is the whole church at work. The grace of God can flow out to men through other channels' than that of preaching. The power of the Gospel can become effective in more ways than one. The whole life of man needs the grace of God, and the grace of Christ reaches men through many channels. Without hesitation and without qualification, we may say that Jesus Christ alone is the hope of the world and the power of redemption. But with no less hesitation, without any equivocation, we say that the whole grace of Christ must be brought to bear upon the whole life of man, and the power of the Gospel can flow out to men through other channels than preaching. The frank and full recognition of this truth is most vital today. We ask, therefore, that Social Service be placed on an equality with all other lines of interest and activity. We ask that the churches seek to prepare workers for this line of service no less than for that of preaching and teaching. Finally, Social Service calls men to a real and inspir- ing service. For this reason, if for no other, it should have a large place in our thought and effort. As one contem- plates the life of the churches in America, what is the one thing that awakens surprise and fear ? Is it not the marked apathy of the people, the lack of enthusiasm, the absenco of any flaming passion for righteousness? From the East and from the West come the same disturbing reports; the people seem to have lost interest in the great spiritual things of life; everything is so monotonous, so common- place; it seems impossible to arouse them in behalf of any great project; the young men lack enthusiasm and passion and aspiration ; the old men lack vision and hope and con- fidence. Some time ago a gentleman of large experience made a 290 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH tour of the mission stations of the world, and when he came back he passed this criticism on the things that he had seen, and it is all the more significant in that it is friendly criticism. He declared that in heathen lands he had seen many people who had come out of darkness into God's marvelous light. Many of those were living brave and faithful lives; but he says: "I missed something in the lives of those people. One day it came home to me. These people are not living as you might expect men and women to live who believe that they have found the best thing in the world." I do not know how it is in foreign lands, among converts from heathenism; but I know how it is at home. The members of our churches are not living as you might expect men and women to live who believe that they have found the best thing in the world. More than this, the members of our churches are not working as you might expect men and women to work who believe that they are a part of the divine adventure of building a King- dom of God on earth. We need something that shall put meaning into life, that shall put new enthusiasm into the heart and new energy into the will. We need something that shall make the hearts of men throb with a new joy and hope and confi- dence. We need something that shall set the feet of young men and maidens marching into tomorrow beating time to the trumpet calls of God. We need some great new pas- sion for righteousness, some mighty throb of the Spirit which will lift men out of themselves and carry them for- ward in the resistless sweep of God. Beyond all else today, the churches need vision — the vision of God, the vision of the new heaven and the new earth that are to be. This lack of interest may be traced back to many causes — the unspirituality of men, the engrossment in ma- terial things, the alienation of men's hearts from the will of God. But this is not by any means the whole truth or the full explanation. Some of it is due to the fact that the old ideas and ideals no longer appeal to men ; many of the aims and objects of the church seem vague and remote, and men are not interested in them. The sins and sorrows of THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 291 the world have become very real to men, and they are com- ing to believe that Christianity is here to make a better world, and they want to know how to build a more Chris- tian social order. Men lack interest in the churches because the churches do not have any great and inspiring vision; they are turning away from the churches because they have no comprehensive and commanding program of action. If I were asked what is one of the greatest needs of the aver- age church today — ^perhaps the greatest need of all — I should say that it is the need of a definite, positive, con- structive program. What is the average church seeking to do? What is the average church working for? Many churches are simply marking time. Many have never thought of these questions which I have asked. And yet if we stopped here we would stop far short of the truth. Many of the people in the churches are really eager to know what to do. Many are waiting anxiously for someone to show them some definite program of action. It is just here that Social Service proves so helpful and so inspiring. It oifers men a definite and positive program. It calls them to some very real and practical tasks. One may claim that it offers men a task great enough and glori- ous enough to inspire their hearts and give life a new mean- ing. To make a better world, a sweeter, brighter, gladder world, a safer world for boys and girls to grow up in, a brighter world for departing saints to look back upon, to make straight paths for men's feet, to build on earth the city of God, and to make earth like heaven — surely this is a task that gives life meaning, that makes the heart throb and calls men to a divine adventure. Social Service is coming to the throne for such a time as this. Social Service offers men a channel through which their love and faith may become effective in social redemp- tion. It is for us to reconceive the essential Gospel — the Kingdom of God on earth — and then to seek to build a city after the divine pattern. It is for us who cherish the vision of the Kingdom of God to put our faith and devotion in pledge in behalf of a better and more righteous social order. If it is right for men to cherish the ideal of a Christian 292 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH social order, it is equally right for men to plan and labor that such an order may be built. If it is Christian to pray for the coming of God's Kingdom, it is no less Christian for men to go out and seek the whole Kingdom. If it is blessed to hunger and thirst after justice, it is no less blessed to go out and make justice prevail among men. Thus we see why the church is vitally interested in Social Service, and thus we see the relation of Social Service to all other forms of Christian effort. Social Service is not an addition to the Gospel ; still less is it a substitute for it. Rather it is an essential and necessary part of the Chris- tianity of Christ. A church that does not serve is not Christian ; a church that is not social is not fully Christian ; a church is Christian in so far as it serves men and is social in its spirit. Thus Social Service has a legitimate and equal place in the life and interest of the Church besides the work of evangelism, missions and education. Any effort that will help any life in any way is the translation into deed of some article of the Christian faith. THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY. CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, Ph.D., D.D., SECRETARY, THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA AND OF ITS SOCIAL SERVICE COMMISSION. An attempt to analyze the world order of today resolves that order into three constituent institutions or move- ments — the State, the body politic, the all-inclusive institu- tion of the social life of mankind ; Democracy, the constant, irresistible rise of the people out of obscurity and oppres- sion into equality and authority; and Christianity, not ecclesiastically constituted, but as the Holy Spirit, of which Jesus of Nazareth was the personal embodiment. The State, inclusive of all human interests in one uni- versal form ; Democracy, the order towards which the State THE CHURCH ANDl MODERN INDUSTRY 293 is moving steadily ; Christianity, the power, the leaven, the dynamic of democracy. And the relation between these three phenomena is vital, substantial and essential. The order of our human progress must come by the three re- lated processes — the State will become the ultimate form of human life; Democracy the ultimate form of the State; Christianity the ultimate form of Democracy. Thus I would state what we call the social problem in its relation to the Gospel and the Church. Democracy is the comprehensive factor; its life and being consist largely in the social movements of our day, and the mission of the Christian Church is that of relating herself to these movements. We discover two elements in our social movements. First, the background of ultimate purpose, intent and ideal; second, the foreground of imme- diate means and methods, and the first duty of the religious leader is to understand their spirit in order that he may guide them toward their true ideals. A complex of wrong means and methods are very often in the foreground, and these obscure the splendid impulses of justice and righteousness in the background. The King- dom of God is made up largely of these modern social move- ments, but it is not yet an ordered kingdom. The Church has here the sovereign vocation of con- science, interpreter and guide. She is to determine what their motive must be, and to impose that conscience on them, to interpret with ethical lucidity their inner and ulti- mate meaning, and with powerful hand and mind and heart to guide them toward their spiritual ends. The conscience, the interpreter, the guide of our Democracy. It is reported that one of our leading jurists has just said that the intent of our Constitution is not to develop, but to restrain Democracy. The intent of the Christian Church is thus somewhat different, provided the learned jurist has stated the whole of his truth. The chief element in our democratic order and its sov- ereign movements is industrialism, a problem that can no more be treated by us as calm, dispassionate, economic stu- dents, and he who could thus consider it, throbbing with 294 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH questions of righteousness and justice, would be capable of pursuing the study of botany by pulling to pieces the roses upon the grave of his mother. For here, if anywhere, we find ourselves in the very depths of religion as it reveals itself in the emotion of the human heart. The Church today is growingly inspired by three im- pulses — first, the impulse of Democracy itself; second, the deepening of human sympathy; and, third, the instinct of self-preservation. The progress of the Church is grievously retarded by the havoc of the present social and industrial order, and she must herself create the new environment which is a paramount necessity for the perpetuation of her life. And yet had she not just that task she could not live. On every hand men are yielding to the sweet temptation to place the Church upon the rack, and sometimes, with playful sarcasm and hilarious impertinence, to apply to her "the third degree." She has failed ! It is asserted that her new and hitherto neglected task is Social Service. Yet it is not new. The Church has al- ways been, either indirectly or directly, the leader, the in- spirer, the supporter of philanthropy, charity and social uplift, and she stands without the suggestion or intimation of a peer. Every movement represented here tonight is a child of the Church and an expression of her Gospel. And, what is more, that Church and that Gospel have been the arch-creators of our social unrest, as the Gospel has given to mankind this vision of his higher, larger, freer, nobler life. How, then, has she failed, and why are we disquieted within? She has failed to adjust herself to a new environ- ment, which came upon her unawares, just as all institu- tions have failed thus far to meet it. The State has failed ; society has failed ; political economists have failed to a most pitiful degree. All are discovering that in our attempts to express our human sympathy we have been dealing only with eifects and neglecting resident forces. We are now getting back to the causes of things, and without, it is to be hoped, neglecting regeneration and redemption, we are seek- ing to apply prevention. And just as the Church has ever THE CHURCH AND MODERN. INDUSTRY 295 been the great physician in repairing social damage, so now she is to become the restorer of the social order, if it is to be restored. The Church's self-respect will no longer permit her to be represented in the slightest degree by the individual at the banquet, who, listening to the impassioned utterance of the orator of the occasion depicting the sufferings, the hardships, the unselfishness, the sacrifice of the working- man, arose at its close, spoke of the stirring of his deep emotion, said that something must be done, and proposed to the assemblage "Three cheers for the workingman!" to be followed by a liberal collection. When the Christian Church attempts thus to get back of social wrong, to its vital and intimate relation with so- cial wrongs, she finds herself at every point face to face with modem industry. Is it the saloon? The problem is inextricably intertwined with industry. Is it social vice? Her commissions trace it, more or less directly, back to the conditions and environment of toil. Is it the welfare of the child? She is facing the wan and pallid countenance of child labor. Is it the conservation of a sweet wifehood and a happy motherhood within the home ? Is it that of guiding and uplifting those who come to our doors from the nations of the world and the islands of the sea? She finds herself involved at every point in the industrial order. Nay, it comes closer home. One of her sacred tasks has been the preservation of the Christian Sabbath. Here she is face to face with the ever-increasing "continuous" indus- tries. The churches and the pastors in the industrial com- munity investigated by the Federal Council of Churches, with from twenty-eight to forty-three per cent of the men working not only twelve hours a day, and sometimes twenty-four continuous hours, but also seven days in every week, have some other questions to ask than the more com- mon one, "Why don't the workingmen go to church?" It becomes not only the question of getting the workingman into the church, but the somewhat larger one of getting the Christian Gospel into industry — of turning from the services of the Church to the Church's service to man- kind. 296 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH At the present moment, it must be admitted, her sense is largely that of a confused and timid helplessness. Within the past few days I met the ministers of three cities which, if certain portents of industrial disaster are not groundless, may all be within sixty days wiped practically out of exist- ence, and they all admitted their inability and that of the Church to stay for one brief instant the inundation. In the rise of our democracy the conscience of the Church and what we call the public conscience are becom- ing one and the same, and the Church is thus assuming a moral responsibility for the public welfare to which, since the earlier days of our fathers, she has not been accus- tomed. The time has long gone by when the leader of industry may say, "This is my business," or the leader of labor may assert, "This is our responsibility." Is it the sad and hag- gard story from Los Angeles? It is the affair, not of labor, but of the whole people. Is it in yonder mining valley, the killing of eighty men by a preventable disaster, the making of eighty widows and two hundred orphans? It is not a question of the ownership of mines — it is the public con- cern. Is it the utter demoralization of the city of Musca- tine, or the threatened annihilation of Lawrence, or the burning to death of one hundred and fifty human bodies in the factory of New York City? These all become, not questions of industry, questions of labor, but of the whole public welfare and conscience. Thus neither Church nor public can longer be content as spectators at the ringside while two picked combatants fight on in an unending battle. Yet witness the piteous spectacle at this moment of a little group of men sitting in New York who are left by the people of this nation, by the State, by the Church, to decide whether or not all the rest of us shall die of hunger, cold and want. All over the world classified groups of men are thus clumsily assuming to be the final arbiters of the world's social destinies. And we abjectly bow to the decision as the dispensation of Almighty God, as it sometimes claims to be. The Church has always had her Creed and her Confes- THE CHURCH ANB MODERN INDUSTRY 297 sion. It was written in the early hour of the day at the summit of the Mountain of Transfiguration. Now she needs her other Creed beside it, to be written in the later hour, with the same Master, down upon the plain of human life, healing men of their diseases. Nay, she has always had this second Creed, but it has not been articulated in industrial terms, and in the adapta- tion of the old to human needs we have evolved this newer one by means of resident forces. Her duty is to follow that Master, and whenever his way leaves the mountain top to cross the highways of our trade and commerce, the paths of political economy or the tracks of social readjustment, his followers must take every risk there is and follow him. My dear friend, Owen Lovejoy, may need to plead the question as to whether little children's lives are a financial asset to the world of industry, but let us be honest with our- selves ; that question is not the Church's business, and it is time we said it. For it is not the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish. And when she finds herself upon the highway with the multitudes who are the causes of our social disorder and unrest, she must not forget that she herself has been the first cause and has largely created" the social crisis. Is she, then, going to stand timid, shrinking and bewildered in the midst of a mighty civilization for which she herself is so responsible? Must she stand for the existent social order, whatever it is, or for only so much of it as accords with the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ? The wrongs of industry which should burden her heart need no recounting to play upon our sympathies. They fill our institutions with widows and orphans, bind heavy bur- dens upon frail womanhood, turn childhood into an abhor- rent drudgery, and these iron hands, with a dreadful pre- cision, close the doors of the higher opportunity which the Church herself points out to men. We find ourselves, however, in ethical confusion. We feel the need of some new commentators and a new set of commentaries. A multitude of economic terms and prin- 298 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH ciples await their translation into spiritual speech, and the call of the day is for spiritually-minded men of the world. Let us clear the field at another point. The objections to the Church's interposition on the ground of her loss of sacrosanctity, and the supporting use of Scripture (which may be cited by the devil for his purpose) are in large measure specious and insincere as well as fallacious and unsound. Yet, in the midst of it all, she faces the question as to whether or not she shall defy those who still proclaim the sense of her irrelevancy to these human problems, and whether or not she shall, at their behest, adapt the ethical principles of the Gospel to the supposititious exigencies of commerce or to the meagre, shame-faced codes of an over- strained industrial system. I honor some of my restraining brethren, who are sincere and who mean to mean well; I love them, but I know that God means to overrule them. That she does not mean to do so was indicated when, at the organization of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, after the affirmation of the divine sovereignty of Jesus Christ, she proposed the Church's Industrial Creed in terms like this : "To us it seems that the churches must stand : "For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life. "For the right of all men to the opportunity for self- maintenance, ever to be wisely and strongly safeguarded against enroachments of every kind, and for the right of workers to protection against the hardships resulting from the swift crisis of industrial change. "For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in in- dustrial dissensions. "For the protection of the worker from dangerous ma- chinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality. "For the abolition of child labor. "For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community. "For the suppression of the 'sweating system.' THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY 299 "For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest hu- man life. "For a release from employment one day in seven. "For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. "For the most equitable division of the products that can ultimately be devised. "For suitable provision for the old age of the workers and for those incapacitated by injury." And then she added : "To the toilers of America, and to those who, by organ- ized effort, are seeking to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this Council sends the greeting of hu- man brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ." And when she made this newer Creed she just stood by her Master in the Synagogue of Nazareth, took the sacred roll from his hand and read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; to preach deliverance to the captive; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Then, turning to the people, she proclaimed, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." This Creed should be placed side by side with the older Creed. It is the older Creed — "I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ our Lord" — simply this, translated into common human terms, and that is all. But now is this all? Is the question the simple one of bringing the persuasions of the Gospel to bear upon what we call Capital and Labor? Part of it is this, but we find serious limitations. While the conflict is too largely brought about by the unequal distribution of wealth through supe- rior ability or opportunity misused for selfish purpose, this is by no means all. It is not simply a moral question. The elements of combination, competition, prices, the tariff and a multitude of economic matters enter in. Are these her 300 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH questions? Manifestly, no. As many preachers have been spoiled by political economy as have been helped by it. Therefore the Church is obliged to appeal for the assist- ance of the State. Seven-day labor is not the simple moral question of inducing an employer to give his working people one day in seven. They are all bound up together. One cannot do this unless others in the same industry comply. Indeed, it cannot be done in one industry or nation unless other industries and peoples cooperate in the same rule. In other words, we have to deal not only with ideals, but with an economic system. Let us realize that two elements are here — ^personality and environment. Men are wrong, heartless, specious, but even when not so the thing itself is bad; and if, in making it right, the persons suffer, we must try to make it right. Let us be frank. We are trying to reverse the law so that, so far as justice may adjust, to him that hath not shall be given, and from him that hath shall be taken away that which belongs to him that hath not. And I thank God I find men of business ready for the task, waiting for both Church and State to tell them what to do. It is not the primary function of the Church to fix the blame or to make a specialty of personalizing the attack (she is not the judge or the divider in this sense) , but mainly to acknowledge her own large share, and this she has done, mark you, more than any other institution or element con- cerned. And if the old garment can no more be patched, or the bottles no longer hold the new wine of justice, she must obey her Lord and let them go. Here we come upon the vexed question of the relation between Church and State, and yet is it not clear? The Church is to do her work in the order of modem industry by bringing to bear upon it the idealism of her Gospel and by infusing it with the impulse of her sympathy. The busi- ness of the State is to bring about such economic conditions and environment that the idealism of the Gospel may have as clear and fair a field as possible. It is this that justifies the Church, not in entangling herself in economic machin- THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY 301 ery, but in turning to the State for a cooperation which will enable her to do her sacred task. Thus the whole problem stands before the moral and social conscience of the nation as we face the wrongs of in- dustry. Force and violence — these cannot be condoned. But men are not violent by nature, and it is the duty of both Church and State, not simply to restrain or to condemn, but to seek the terrible aggravations behind such force and violence. The profound restlessness of the industrial workers is largely caused by their feeling that there are no organic ways, through either Church or State, by which they may act collectively with regard to the things that deeply con- cern and, indeed, determine their whole physical, moral and spiritual welfare. Is it so? Let us ask ourselves what channels are open for them by which they may better their conditions or express their needs. Can we for a moment contend that the industrial work- ers have yet found in the Church an opportunity for self- expression? The question shrinkingly answers itself. That the press of the nation is more than closed to them is clear to any man who reads it side by side with the jour- nals of labor and of social reform. They have the opportunity of political action, ideally to an unlimited degree, practically to a very fragmentary one. Through economic action they have the mutual bargain- ing between employer and employed, which is, again, ideally their privilege ; but can they really feel that their masters are primarily concerned with human conservation? Finally, are the courts of justice their last and adequate resort? In short, there has been, up to this time, no satisfactory medium for such expression; the workers feel themselves to be economically and morally disfranchised, and that he that is not for them is against them. Therefore perhaps the most important measure, next to the affirmation of the Industrial Creed of the Federal Coun- 302 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH cil of the Churches, is the recent message of the President, prompted by the appeal of thirty ministers and social work- ers, asking a Federal commission empowered to lay bare the whole problem before the eyes of the American people. For the situation is veiled in a mysterious darkness. If we could only know the real proportion or disproportion between dividend and wage, between selfishness and human sacrifice ! We want to know why, when men are, according to the common plea, losing money, they maintain a status which seems to give their claim a doubtful cast. We want to know whether or not the increased wage should be the contribution of the industry or the passing of the collection plate to us by the industrial diaconate and elders. Do we not? Is it not time for the Church to say to the State in the name of her Master, "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest?" Thus far we have suggested two cooperating elements in the solution of the problems of industry — the moral lead- ership of the nation in the Church, and the economic leader- ship in the State. When, however, we get close to the particular problem, we find not simply, as is generally supposed, the two ele- ments commonly called Capital and Labor, but rather four elements immediately concerned. We may eliminate two of them from the situation ideally, and earnestly wish we might do so actually. The first of these consists of those leaders of industry, wanting in sympathy, whose spirit is bitter, whose selfish- ness is primary, and those with them who, if not moved by greed, are blinded by economic fallacies. I mean those em- ployers of labor who — and sometimes riotously — conspire together for the covert or avowed intent and purpose of crushing out of existence the organization of industry, whose philosophy is determinism, and whose political economy is that of a sometimes paternalistic feudalism, which they blindly seek to conserve in the face of an industrial democ- racy chartered by the very Gospel of Jesus Christ itself. THE CHURCH ANB, MODERN INDUSTRY 303 It is true that John the Baptist said, "Be content with your wages," but he said it to a parasitic class. But it is truer that Jesus said that he that was least in the Kingdom of Heaven was greater than John. The second element, and equally to be eliminated, are those leaders of labor who are equally false to this great trust, for to worship the Mammon that other men possess is little, if any, better than to worship the Mammon that we possess ourselves, and labor has her foes within. The one element is to be condemned equally with the other. Anarchy conspired and syndicalism plotted in the luxurious office or the sumptuous parlor of the hotel are no better, if not worse, than when conspired and directed from the dark room of the saloon. Here the solemn obliga- tion of the Church may bring her to the cross. Like her Master, she may be betrayed, both by Judas and the temple traders, for thirty pieces of silver, and by the blind popu- lace, who likewise cry that she be crucified, and she may find her life by losing it upon the cross between two thieves. Having eliminated these two elements, we come down to two others — that saving element among the leaders of industry, of high-minded men with sympathetic hearts, who are seeking to extricate themselves and their fellows from the toils of a bewildered economic system ; the other, those high-minded leaders of labor who ought to be the co- partners and the colleagues of the other element and of the Church itself. The industrial program of the Federal Council should become the articles of faith of the Chamber of Commerce and the Manufacturers' Association, and not only that of Labor and the Church. Here is a magnificent chance for a new set of gentlemen's agreements. All it needs is the stretching of existing ones, and when this is done every preacher will be willing to preach nothing but the simple Gospel, whatever that is. The trouble with the trusts is not that they are too large. They are not large enough. I speak of the leaders of labor. Do I mean Organized Labor? Is it not clear to any sane man that we might as well insist that we would discuss religion without recog- 304 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH nizing the Christian Church as to talk of treating the prob- lems of industry apart from the collectivism and the sol- idarity of labor? And has not the recent sad experience in the city of Lawrence shown us clearly that we may take our choice between the guidance of Organized Labor, with its economic machinery, as a conserving, constructive, evo- lutionary agency, mingling at least light with heat, serving not only to incite, but also to restrain — our choice between this and the anomaly of absolutely unregulated riot in the very cause of justice? For syndicalism is here, not as a vague and idle threat, but as a stern reality. The alliance which our President and Senate could not make has come to pass, and the three-fold treaty made, down in the deep mines of Germany, America and England. Instead of sol- idarity and communal action for the uplift of the people, we may have mankind destroying the plague by burning down its own house and meeting social wrongs by social wrong. So much for the long-sown seeds of our neglect. The scene is shifting. The battleground is within labor itself, and the crisis which is imminent will give the Church the sovereign opportunity of all her history to establish peace with the administering hand of justice. And the other three cooperating elements — the State, the high-minded men of Industry, and the true leaders of Labor — are today awaiting, though they know it not, even though she knows it not, the moral leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ. In the burning, fiery furnace there is a fourth form, and it is like unto the Son of Man. Her task is to train, transform and inspire such leaders of Industry, to guide with sympathy the leaders of Labor, and to mold the conscience of the State. She must do it or revise her Gospel. Let the Church do it, or else let her accept in place of her Lord an industrial master, to say with outstretched hands, "Let little children suffer for me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Mammon." Let the Church do it or say frankly, "The Sabbath was not made for man." THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY 305 Let the Church do it or answer her Master, "How much is a man better than a sheep?" No better. Let the Church do it or get a new Higher Critic to cut out Dives and Lazarus, and another to find that the twenty- fifth chapter of Matthew is an interpolation and the Book of Luke a pseudo gospel. It is one thing or the other — the Teaching of Jesus or the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche; God or Mammon; Barabbas or Christ. But is this her task? The only time, perhaps, when Jesus declared the moral determinance of human destiny was in the severe and searching utterance in the twenty- fifth chapter of Matthew : "Inasmuch as ye did it, or as ye did it not, to one of these, my brethren, ye did it, or ye did it not, to me." I read this chapter the other evening. I had just read the latest word from the Bureau of Labor — thirty-five thou- sand men killed; of two million injured in one year in in- dustry. A large proportion, so the report said, were pre- ventable disasters, and I said as I read the chapter: Two million and thirty-five thousand Christs ! As I walked the streets of Lawrence — thirty thousand Christs at six dollars a week! (These are not my words. They are the words of Jesus.) In the factory the other day, with its five hundred little children, with less glow upon their cheeks than that which flashes among the machinery of which they are but a part — five hundred Christs! In one industry in one little town called Bethlehem — five thousand Christs, working twelve hours a day, and sometimes twenty-four hours, seven days every week ! In the name, then, of the churches of the nation, may I take this occasion to proclaim the moral and spiritual lead- ership of the Church, inspiring the State, molding Industry, guiding Labor, until every home in our land, to the last poor stranger that comes within our gates, becomes the abode of happiness and health. Until the rushing wheels of industry no longer drown 306 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the moans while they blight the lives of little children as dear to God as your children are and mine. Until womanhood in the home shall be a happy wife- hood and a sweet motherhood that shall bear its own nat- ural and sufficient burdens without the haggard countenance of hunger of body and of soul, or, if in toil, shall have the safeguards of virtue and health— Until manhood, with a toil that does not diminish self- respect, and with leisure to cultivate the finer graces of our human life, shall all be the answer to our prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." Two things the Church must gain — the one is spiritual authority; the other is human sympathy. And be her human sympathy ever so warm and passionate, if she have not her spiritual authority she can do little more than raise a limp signal of distress with a weak and pallid hand. But if, on the other hand, she assume a spiritual authority with- out a commensurate human sympathy, she becomes what her Master would call "a whited sepulchre filled with dead men's bones." Now, while it is true that the Church's Gospel has cre- ated the very situation which faces us, it is also true that she has retreated for a little time before the very problem she has made, like the apostle on his way from Rome, in the story of the Russian novelist. "Seest thou that brightness approaching us?" "I see nothing," said Nazarius. "Some figure is coming in the glare of the sun." Then Peter threw himself on his knees and this cry left his lips: "0 Christ! Christ!" and again, "Quo vadis, "If thou desert My people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time." "Quo vadis, Domine?" This time the voice of Nazarius. Domine?" "To Rome," said the apostle, and he returned. But what has this to do with the men and women to whom I speak this evening? We are not responsible for this situation, sad as it may be. We have righly laid the blame sometimes on what we have called Capital, some- THE CHURCH AND MODERN INDUSTRY 307 times on what we have called Labor. That was where it belonged. Let us read that twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew again some time, and, if we have not been before, we shall be pro- foundly impressed by this strangely severe and significant fact — ^that the judgment of Jesus was there pronounced upon men in every case for the things they didn't do. And this message tonight, my friends, is just the simple Gospel, "For I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." We have only been asking the question — Quo Vadis, Dominie? IX. THE CALL and QUALIFICATIONS of the SOCIAL WORKER The Potential Resources of the South for Leadership in Social Service The Call of the Social Worker Qualifications of Social Workers THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH FOR LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE. REV. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, Ph.D., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL REFORM BUREAU, WASHINGTON, D. C. I have resided in the South for sixteen years, at Wash- ington, and so come to this Southern Sociological Congress as a member, not as a visitor or guest, but I appreciate the confidence implied in asking a man of Northern training to review all Southern problems in this last hour of the day- conferences; and, partly in preparation for a faithful dis- charge of this trust, I have devoted four and a third months of this year to a tour of Southern cities and towns, speak- ing to many schools and colleges, black and white, and to many conferences and assemblies of Southern workers in moral and social reform, and using the abundant occasions thus afforded for securing first-hand information bearing on my theme. I approach the subject in the historic and scientific spirit that has prevailed all through this Congress, which forbids the intrusion of either flattery or prejudice, and demands absolute frankness in the statement of facts and convictions. This Southern Sociological Congress itself, which you have made a permanent organization, is one of the "Poten- tial Resources of the South for Leadership in Social Serv- ice." In many years' participation in conferences for so- cial betterment I have found none that so broadly and fear- lessly included even "burning issues" legitimately related to its purpose ; none that has discussed with such directness even the most popular of evil customs, unafraid of political and personal sensitiveness, that has made some conferences on poverty and crime eliminate, for example, all except the most casual references to the drink evil, which is like study- ing a tree with the tap-root ignored, or playing Hamlet without a Hamlet. It is fitting that we should recognize the profound statesmanship shown by Governor Hooper and those asso- ciated with him in the inception of this Congress. 312 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH The South has hitherto relied chiefly upon conversion and prohibition as remedies for social ills, with only small and scattered groups engaged in other forms of social bet- terment. As the many fragments of a Swiss watch, sepa- rately made in many homes and shops, are brought to the "assembly room" for combination in the complete watch, so we have assembled all Southern social forces here and have called expert social engineers to teach us how to develop yet others out of Southern "resources" as yet only "poten- tial" in the sense that they are undeveloped or unco- ordinated. In the United States Congress the South is now the leader in moral legislation, not alone in temperance legisla- tion, of which the Southern champions are too numerous to mention, with Captain Hobson, of Alabama, at their head, at the head of temperance leaders everywhere, but also in the anti-gambling crusade, which Congressman Sims and Senator Lea, both of Tennessee, are leading, while Senator Johnston, of Alabama, is the leader in securing a Sunday rest law for the national capital. Some of the reasons for this national leadership in moral legislation — reasons also why there should be a wider lead- ership — are that the South, as compared with the East and the West, is the most American, the most rural, the most religious, the most Sabbath-observing, and has the largest percentage of saloonless territory. There is another "potential" but hitherto undeveloped Southern resource to be named later. To these "resources" I shall return as my main theme after glimpsing the difficulties and problems to which these "potential resources" should be applied. SOUTHERN DIFFICULTIES IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. Having mentioned the potential advantages the South has in undertaking social service, its peculiar disadvantages should also be stated. First, there is the disadvantage of having to deal with two separated races accustomed to independent action in religion, education and other branches of activity. This THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OP THE SOUTH 313 Sociological Congress is itself in part a recognition that the negro race needs more help from the more favored race in the development of a better family life and a better com- munity life for the sake of both races. I suggest that each white college maintain a "college settlement" among the colored people, manned by graduates of colored colleges, who shall work as friendly visitors in prompting a more hygienic and a happier family and community life. We need not linger on admitted mistakes of white, of North and South alike, in dealing with the negro. The wrong of slavery was followed by the wrong of an unin- telligent suffrage, which should have been corrected by the impartial disfranchisement of all ignorance, white and black. It probably would have been but for the second disad- vantage I am now to mention — namely, that Southern churches in former years generally failed to recognize, what this Southern Sociological Congress insures they will in- creasingly see hereafter, that THE CHURCH IS CALLED TO APPLY THE PRINCIPLES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, NOT ALONE TO INDIVIDUALS, BUT TO THE WHOLE SOCIAL LIFE, TO BUSINESS AND POLITICS AND PLEASURES, TO THE CITY, THE STATE AND THE NATION. A third disadvantage, partly due to the second, is that the South as yet has few social workers of its own and has hitherto found it necessary to import most of them. These imported workers, who are much appreciated, would them- selves be the first to admit that it would be a manifest ad- vantage to develop more Southern social workers, "to the manor born," by such an "Interchurch College for Reli- gious and Social Workers" as is already assured for this "Athens of the South." There is a fourth hindrance to social betterment, not peculiar to the South, though it is the South because of its Americanism and its religiousness that has the best chance to lead in its correction — namely, that the leading men of the churches and chambers of commerce generally refuse to accept municipal offices, with the consequence — 314 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH for which they are as much at fault as anybody else — that city officials, who are in closest touch with social problems, usually know little and care less for their solution. In four months' recent study of Southern cities I have found very few where the State laws intended to promote moral and social betterment are not openly nullified — child labor laws as much as prohibition laws, and anti-gambling and purity laws as much as either — and even in exceptional cities where laws are enforced the city governments are not usually in lively sympathy with the laws and enforce them only under strong popular pressure. Since good city government must be one of the chief factors in any successful scheme of social betterment, it would be fitting for this Southern Sociological Congress to send out its PATRIOTIC APPEAL FOR CHRISTIAN BUSINESS MEN AND COLLEGE PROFESSORS OF THE FIRST RANK TO TAKE THEIR TURNS IN SO- CIAL SERVICE AS CITY OFFICIALS, as such men do in the efficient and honored city governments of Europe. Surely for such men to give up commercial opportunities and cultured ease to curb the rampant greed and lust and appetite of our cities would be one of the victories of peace "not less renowned than war." And it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the new political machinery for bringing back "government of the people" will in some cases make matters worse instead of better unless good citi- zens are willing to run the new "machine." For example, in some cities where popular primaries and the commission plan of government have been adopted to oust the political oligarchy, the primaries have been manipulated to enthrone the "gang" as commissioners, who have so been saved the necessity of bribing a big city council, in which there is always danger of encountering a few honest men. The "commission plan" is best only when the best men will work it. THE SOUTH'S SPECIAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS. What, now, are the social problems that in the South, somewhat more than elsewhere, challenge the attention of the best minds? THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OP THE SOUTH 315 1. Lynching is a social problem that touches the very foundation of civilization — government by law rather than mob impulse. If I were speaking to people of the North I should remind them that labor riots and dynamiting plots are lynching at wholesale. Lynching has had no severer condemnation than in the South, and what is needed is a campaign of education to support the South's own crusaders against it. 2. As to suffrage, a problem that touches the very foundation of popular government, if I were in the North I should condemn the foolish enfranchisement of foreign ignorance, much of it purchasable ; but here I dare to say — and have no doubt I shall have the best people of the South with me in doing so — that the disfranchisement of ignor- ance, which is right and wise, should be impartialli/ applied, regardless of "grandfathers." Let notice be served that after five years no new voters, native or foreign, white or black, will be admitted to suffrage who cannot read their ballots unassisted. 3. Social immorality, though found everywhere, is in the South a most serious part of its race problem. Segre- gated vice in the South is usually located in the negro sec- tion, even though the patrons of many of the resorts — and the inmates, too, in many cases — are white. Asheville has started a revolt against this injustice which should find wide support. It is the West, however, that is leading the crusade against the "red lights" that do not warn, but lure as moral wreckers. No longer can any intelligent person innocently believe that "doctrine of devils" about "necessary evils," since the abolition of the vice markets in Los Angeles, Seat- tle, Omaha, Minneapolis and the whole State of Iowa. For the sake of both races, every Southern State should adopt the Iowa "red light" injunction law and back it up by an unprecedented campaign of education, in school and out of school, on the sacredness of sex. And it is fitting that its introduction into the South should begin at the national capital, for which purpose Southern Senators and Con- 316 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH gressmen should be asked to support the Kenyon "red light" injunction bill. 4. Child labor, a problem that touches the very founda- tions of the community's physical and mental and moral welfare, a wrong of which Northern States are all guilty in varying degrees, is yet more a Southern problem. It is everywhere an evil hard to cure because it is difficult for one State to undertake any great compulsory modification of in- dustry not enforced in another competing State. This is one of the subjects in which the new "Children's Bureau" at Washington ought to be able to help by promoting uni- formity of State legislation in the real interest of all. 5. What I call the Sunshine Branch of Social Service has not been developed in the South as yet to such a large degree as in the North. I refer to such matters — ^to take only its application to childhood — as children's playgrounds, fresh air funds, vacation schools, "big brothers" of Juvenile Courts and George Junior Republics. I am urging that in every city the planting, weeding and sunshine workers should get together every Monday at noon, the preachers' leisure hour, in a Welfare Lunch Club, as a social center, that those who rely chiefly on evangelism — the "planting" group — and those who rely chiefly on negative reforms — the "weeding" group — may know each other and the "sun- shine" constructive group and cooperate whenever possible. SIX POTENTIAL SOCIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH. And now we come back to the very heart of our theme — the potential advantages of the South for leadership in social service in the nation and the world. The first advantage is that the South is the most Amer- ican of the three grand divisions of our country. I do not forget that a minority of our foreign immigrants are loyal to American institutions, while a minority of Americans have apostatized by going over to such foreign institutions as the imported saloon and its Siamese twin, the continental THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OP THE SOUTH 317 Sunday, "the holiday of despotism." But unquestionably there are great advantages in work for social progress in having a homogeneous population, with national ideals in common, rather than a Babel of tongues and as many stand- ards of social excellence. Tennessee, I am told, is ninety-eight per cent native born. Other Southern States have a similar record. It is a strange thing to those familiar with the manufacturing cities of the North to find Southern iron mills and cotton factories manned by Americans, many of them moun- taineers and country folks recently drawn to the cities, their strong individualism not yet adjusted to the methods of social action that are necessary to social welfare in the city, which is one reason why city governments in some pre- dominantly American cities of the South are no better as yet than in some predominantly foreign cities of the North. This is the appropriate place to add the potential re-' source of the South for leadership in social service that I have reserved for its timely insertion here STATE PATRIOTISM which is a feeble force in the North and West, where a major part of the population of almost every State were bom in another land or another State, is in the South a potent force that has been invoked hitherto under the ban- ner of "State Sovereignty" and "States' Rights," chiefly against alleged invasions of the Federal power, but SHOULD NOW BE APPEALED TO AS THE STRONG- EST DEFENSE AVAILABLE AGAINST THE NEW AND MORE SERIOUS PERIL OF MUNICIPAL REVOLT against those State laws that seek to restrain intemperance, impurity. Sabbath-breaking and gambling, against which, where local officials consent to nullification, provision should be made for the State government to exercise "State Sov- ereignty." State laws are nowhere more ruthlessly defied and nulli- fied than in some of the large cities of the South, and in some of the smaller cities also. It does not seem to have 318 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH occurred to the friends of law and order in those cities and in the States whose honor they have trampled in the dust that an appeal to "States' Rights" is in order, since the most fundamental of "States' Rights" is the right of the majority of the State to rule throughout the State through laws enacted by the Legislature and enforced whenever nec- essary by the State government. Against the specious cry for "home rule" let us raise the standard of "State Sover- eignty." If a city where corrupt voters have the balance of power should rule itself, much more should smaller com- munities where the proportion of upright and intelligent citizenship is larger. That would mean the abolition of both State and national governments, TO MAKE THE WHOLE COUNTRY A "TOWN HEAP" of petty democ- racies and kingdoms — the cities in many cases being abso- lute monarchies ruled by a petty "boss." Governors should have power to remove perjured mayors and sheriffs, and State Supreme Courts should have power to "recall" unfaith- ful judges of lower courts and unfaithful official prosecutors. It is a travesty on "State sovereignty" that several Southern Governors are merely figureheads, the office having never been rehabilitated since it was stripped of power in recon- struction days when Governors were temporarily appointed by the Federal power. It is generally recognized that the colonization of corrupt bribable voters just before election is one of the worst forms of political corruption. What is a big city but a place where such voters are permanently "colonized" in dangerous num- bers? It is the right of every "sovereign citizen" in a State to claim the benefit of the best laws the majority sentiment of the whole State can produce. Every court is his royal court, and every officer is his public servant. If an official guess at "public sentiment" is to displace State law in a corrupt city, why may not the "crooked ward" set aside even a city ordinance? In the North they no longer speak of the war of the sixties as "the rebellion," but rather as the American Civil War. But the word rebellion is a fitting term to describe THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH 319 a city government which openly defies State sovereignty, the mayor assuming to be monarch of all he surveys. At Hillsdale, Virginia, white savages from the moun- tains shot down a judge and jury. How is it any less anar- chistic for a whole city government to kill the laws of a State, as the city governments of several Southern States and some in the North are doing, in cooperation with a nation-wide conspiracy of brewers and distillers to terrorize and bribe timid citizens into full surrender? From this glimpse of city problems we turn to discuss the rurality of the South, which is fast decreasing before the world-wide social passion for the city, but the South will be predominantly rural long enough to put adequate checks upon the vicious elements in the cities and so reform them by increasing the State powers of law enforcement, if only it will act swiftly, and refuse to be deceived by the specious appeals for "home rule" that come from that triumvirate which rules so many cities, Appetite, Greed and Lust. It is one of the most absurd conceptions that ever de- ceived a sane man that those citizens of a State who are most environed by evil elements are least entitled to the protection of State law. And it would be a comedy if it were not tragedy that this doctrine of "home rule" for municipal cancers has been advocated by some municipal reformers — of the kind who work out their theories in elegant libraries rather than in the city streets, the clinic where it has been my privilege to study about eighteen cities a month for twenty-four years. Let the South be thankful the rural vote still rules. In speaking of the religiousness of the South, I do not forget that many of its religious people conceive of religion too individualistically. They have overlooked the plain teachings of the Bible that "salvation" means, not the sal- vation of the individual, but "the salvation of Israel" — that is, "full salvation" means the salvation of the whole man, body and soul, and of the whole community here and now. The seed of the gospel of Moses, Isaiah and Christ, in Luke 4, is "the Spirit in ME," but the full grown tree is a Chris- tianized community, where blind asylums, prison reform, 320 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH civil liberty and social justice will repeat the jubilee year after year. That is "the good news to the poor," whose economic and civic and sociological glory has been ration- alized into a mere allegory of personal conversion by many, if not most of those of orthodox views. The South's relig- iousness nevertheless furnishes a favorable ground for de- veloping those moral and social ideals that even those out- side the churches usually admit have sprung from Jesus of Nazareth. The social mission of the Church is illustrated by an incident told in this connection by Mr. Fred B. Smith in the great "Men and Religion" meetings, that have put "social service" into the official definition of religion. A farmer and his wife, in an art gallery, were viewing the familiar picture of "The Guardian Angel," that is, turning aside a child pursuing a butterfly on a bridge on which one railing, just ahead of the unobserving child, is lacking. The old farmer was overheard to say, "Why don't that fool angel mend that railing and then go about his business? Closely allied to this religious "potentiality" is the fact that, relatively speaking, "the South is solid for the Sab- bath," and the Sabbath is the water supply of all moral and social forces. As Bob Burdette says wittily and profound- ly, "The Declaration of Independence was not written in a beer dive on Sunday afternoon — not by a jug full." Not much manly effort for moral or social uplift can be expected from those who spend the one day appointed for uplifting altruism in selfish toil or brutal dissipation or childish play. The South may well resist, in the interest of social welfare as well as of labor and religion, the efforts to make its "holy day of freedom" into the holiday whose anarchistic fruitage is seen in Mexico and other Spanish republics close at hand. I must not fail to show, however, that the religious and Sabbath-observing tendencies of the South show a perilous tendency to decline. Here are some official figures of the International Sunday School Associa- tion for the year 1911, which show that a majority of the children under twenty years of age in every State invited to this conference — in some cases two-thirds, in some THE POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH 321 three-fourths — do not attend any Sunday school, Protestant or Catholic : No. in S. S. No. Outside STATES Under 20 Under 20 North Carolina 439,804 656,123 Virginia 403,464 601,960 South Carolina 295,662 507,004 Maryland 238,607 326,254 West Virginia 201,730 317,334 Georgia 421,176 832,998 Alabama 325,743 727,508 Florida 114,805 169,303 Tennessee 329,464 781,559 District of Columbia 49,688 54,183 Missouri 481,052 1,066,036 Mississippi 258,961 648,853 Arkansas 161,347 203,476 Kentucky 304,836 836,863 Texas 496,219 1,266,006 Oklahoma 174,852 275,737 Louisiana 162,424 614,594 THE SOUTH'S WIDESPREAD PROHIBITION A SOCIAL BENEFIT. That local and State prohibition have captured 90 per cent of Southern towns and cities is unquestionably another of its sociological potentialities because of the acknowledged relation of alcoholism to crime and poverty; and on the positive side its benefit is illustrated by the fact that in Congress it is chiefly from those representing "dry" terri- tory that we recruit active promoters of all moral measures. THE SOCIAL IDEAL. In conclusion, let me remind you that the South has an advantage over other sections in realizing the social ideal, "The City Beautiful and Good," in that it has both the "beauty" and the goodness at hand in profusion. Some one 322 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH has said that art is not adequately expressed in a separate picture or statue, which are but fragments, but rather in a whole building that is beautiful alike in interior decora- tion, in outside appearance and in its surroundings. In a beautiful Southern street, with royal palms in the frontage of its modest homes as well as its palatial residences, I re- vised that critique of art and said. Art is adequately ex- pressed only in a whole neighborhood of beautiful build- ings. And when I visited a city in which no ugly slums or hovels or saloons or hideous billboards are allowed, and where the deforested hills at hand are castelated, and where in the family and city life we see the finest of fine and use- ful arts, the art of right social living (which is the best definition of sociology), I said. There is no adequate expres- sion of beautiful and useful arts except in what the prophets from Abraham to our own day have sought, THE CITY BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD. THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER. EDWARD T. DEVINE, PH.D., LL.D., EDITOR OF THE SURVEY, NEW YORK CITY. The social worker, in the sense in which I am using the term, is that man or woman who, in any relation of life, professional, industrial, political, educational or domestic, whether on salary or as a volunteer, whether on his own individual account or as a part of an organized movement, is working conscientiously, according to his light intelli- gently, and according to his strength persistently, for the promotion of the common welfare — the common welfare as distinct from that of a party, or a class, or a sect, or a busi- ness interest, or a particular institution, or a family, or of himself. No one will disparage the hardest kind of hard work for one's self, or his family, or his business, or his THE CALL OP THE SOCIAL WORKER 323 institution, or his church, or his party; but in so far as the point of view is individual, exclusive, institutional, sec- tarian or partisan, the worker is not a social worker. In so far as one rises above his private and selfish interests and considers the effect of what he is doing, or leaving undone, upon the general welfare, he takes the social point of view, enrolls himself consciously or unconsciously in the ranks of the nation's social workers, and accepts the civic responsi- bility of the citizen. The social worker is not necessarily for change as such. There is conservative as well as revolutionary social work to be done. To destroy or to construct may seem more heroic than merely to oppose impending changes or to main- tain existing institutions ; but the truest service of the com- mon good may lie in such conservative opposition to radical policies. Social workers are, therefore, to be found in both camps — insurgent and stalwart — reactionary and middle- of-the-road — and there is no inconsistency in their mutual recognition of their essential kinship. One of the extraordinary developments of this opening decade of the twentieth century is the extent to which the multitude of social workers, engaged in various occupations, enrolled under various banners, have made mutual discov- ery of one another's existence, have become aware of one another's common aims and aspirations. They have found themselves, so to speak, and in doing so have found that this social point of view, this mutual interest in social work, which differentiates them not only from the exploiter, but from the neutral and indifferent member of society, is itself one of the strongest of social bonds. Who knows but that one day, in the reshaping of politics now in progress, it may make of social workers the nucleus of a political party, or at least of a distinct social movement which shall per- meate all political parties, all religious denominations, giv- ing them increased vitality and a new grasp on the living issues of the present day? A generation ago one of the last places, perhaps, from which one would have expected a new view of social rela- tions to come would have been the charitable societies. The 324 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH charities of a generation ago were respectable, but certainly not radical or revolutionary. They emphasized the old- fashioned virtues of thrift, temperance and industry. They had not overmuch sympathy with untried doctrines of so- cial philosophy. They fixed their attention upon individuals or families in distress, and seldom penetrated to a con- sideration of social conditions which might influence per- sonal character and the fate of individuals. They did not compare notes. They did not generalize except within very narrow limits. They were, if not exactly the ally, certainly often the accompaniment of wealth and privilege. Work- ingmen looked askance at them. Politicians never heard of them, except in a pseudo form, as a device for keeping in line a very low grade of political supporters and retainers. If we may compare small things with great, it would probably have caused a sneer like that heard of old, as to whether any good could come out of Nazareth, to have sug- gested that here, in the daily experiences of these neglected and often mismanaged charities, was to be found, after all, the regenerating and revivifying discovery — ^the re- discovery, if you prefer — that we do not live to ourselves alone; that poverty and ill-health, intemperance and crime, corruption and injustice, squalor and misery, involve us all in one common destruction, the old lesson of religion and the new lesson of social solidarity, and that the one thing needful is such a spiritual awakening as will compel the community to deal, not by some magical formula, not by some golden panacea, not once for all, as some mistakenly think, but to deal nevertheless radically and intelligently with specific social evils, one after another, with child labor, with low wages, with insanitary housing, with vagrancy, with crime, with the race problem, and to deal with them not merely in their symptoms, but in their complicated ram- ifications and with their ultimate causes. Yet so it has been. The charitable societies, in their public meetings and annual reports; in their international, national, State and local conferences; in their congresses and exhibits ; in the surveys which they have made and the investigations which they have induced governmental de- THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER 325 partments and State bureaus to make ; in the material which they have supplied to the universities; in their journals and books, and in the periodical literature which they have in- spired; in their influence upon the discussions of the daily press and platform and pulpit; in their schools of philan- thropy — in all these ways, and even more, perhaps, in the reflex influence upon the workers in the charitable societies, upon their members and contributors, have given us a new view of life and of human relations in general — a view which is at once conservative, constructive and wholesome; radical, revolutionary and disturbing; absolutely non- partisan, catholic and social; comprehensive in its sweep, and yet sternly practical and scientific in its recognition of things as they are ; a view which tempts to no violence and yet leaves no wrong permanently on the throne; a view which exalts the family, the State, religion, security of life and of property, and yet insists that all institutions are made for men, and not men for the institutions; a view which opens our eyes to the evils which are, but yet does not seek to make them, in some mystical sense, symbols of imaginary evils which are not. The call of the social worker is not a vague, sentimental and impractical summons. It is definite, specific and irre- sistible. This social philosophy which springs from a new and fearless scrutiny of the hard facts of life puts before itself certain concrete tests by which we may judge exist- ing conditions as to whether they are satisfactory, by which we may judge measures as to whether they should be adopted, and by which we may judge leaders as to whether they are entitled to confidence and support. Among these tests I name first of all the death rate. That surely is a very cold-blooded, scientific criterion. The death rate is a very conservative institution handed down to us from our remote ancestors, older than constitutions and charters, relentless as fate, bearing a smiling aspect toward such measures as have aroused the enthusiasm of social workers, frowning upon destitution and neglect and exploitation, with never an error of judgment, never a concession to good intentions, and never a trace of maudlin 326 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH sympathy. The death rate pronounces judgment upon con- gestion of population, upon unsanitary dwellings, whether in the tenements of the great metropolis, in the alleys of smaller cities, in construction camps or on the isolated, con- taminated clearing. It makes way cheerfully for health and longevity in homes that are clean, that admit the sun- shine and the fresh air, and the disinfectant when the ne- cessity arises. The death rate points its finger unerringly at the infected house, the infected milk can, the infected well, the infected privy vault, the infected dairy, the in- fected meat market, the infected oyster bed, the infected drug store, the infected saloon and the cursedly infected house of prostitution. The death rate sings aloud joyously in its movement toward zero ; at the vigorous, efficient, non- partisan health department; at the conscientious landlord and the reasonable tenant; at the certified dairy and the protected water supply; at meat and flour and fruit which are sound and wholesome in their origins, safeguarded in market and in transit, and prepared for the table in sensible and scientific fashion. The death rate has a good word for sanatoria, for incipient consumptives; for colonies for feeble-minded and epileptics; for early attention to cases of nervous and mental disturbance. The death rate is a w^onderful temperance agitator, absolutely fanatical in its preference for total abstinence, and pronouncing a sorrow- ful curse to the third and fourth generations upon drug and alcoholic inebriates. The death rate raises its warning voice against the dirt poisoning of the milk on which in- fants are to be fed, and even argues with a persuasive voice in favor of natural maternal nursing. It pleads for the in- struction of mothers in the care of infants, for scrupulous attention to obstructions to breathing, decayed teeth, curved spines, defective eyesight and other physical defects in growing children, and it denounces child labor. The death rate tells us not only of deaths — that would be much — but it tells by inference also of disease. If there is a death rate from typhoid, we may be sure that there are not only deaths and the sickness preceding these deaths, but many cases of illness besides, for not all typhoid results in death. Some THE CALL OP THE SOCIAL WORKER 327 diseases, like pneumonia and meningitis, have a high mor- tality and death may come quickly on the attack. Other diseasesi like rheumatism and other bad conditions like un- sewered streets kill at long range or indirectly, and it is difficult to disentangle them from the so-called end diseases which account for the death in the mortality tables ; yet, in a large way, there is always, of course, a relation between the death rate and the prevalence of disease, and to the social worker the disease or the bad condition is even more important than death. Altogether, the death rate deserves well of mankind. One little consideration only it asks as a condition of being genuinely serviceable, viz. : That it shall not be misinterpreted and abused. Figures do not lie, but liars will figure, and statisticians should have their cre- dentials quite as much as pharmacists or physicians. Science is placing in our hands another test analogous to that of the death rate, which we may call the fatigue test. This new touchstone is a very familiar phenomenon in its ordinary, common-sense aspect. We know it well, and that it is of two kinds. There is a wholesome, delicious fatigue after exercise, after hard work — a fatigue which is a favor- able condition of sound repose and pleasant recreation. There is another fatigue — ^that of exhaustion, of over- strain, favorable not to repose and recreation, but to dis- ease. One hears even of the toxin of fatigue, and it is no metaphor. Fatigue acts like a poison, and scientists may ascertain the precise physiological conditions under which the poisoning of the system by the fatigue toxin begins. The ergograph and other delicate instruments measure the reactions of working girls to ascertain to a nicety the effect of the eighth and the tenth hour of labor at the machine, the precise amount of injury resulting from standing all day behind the counter or at the ironing board without re- laxation or change of position. Roughly, we can deter- mine, without serious difficulty and without the accurate instruments of the physical laboratory, whether at given ages, at particular occupations, respectively, for women and for men, for adults and children, a day's work of a given length is or is not resulting in such exhausting and de- 328 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH structive fatigue. I do not for a moment suggest that this should be the positive criterion of the length and the con- ditions of the working day, but it is useful in fixing an out- side limit. Working men and women have other interests and other necessary occupations besides what passes offi- cially for their day's work, and it is no longer conceivable that the work itself should be pushed up to the limit which will barely permit physical recuperation for the next day's toil. Men work that they may live, but do not live merely that they may work. There is more than the child knew in his answer to the teacher's inquiry as to whether the father was living. "No," said the child; "he is working." So it will be until there is everywhere a margin for safety and a much wider margin to permit workers to realize their standard of living. I suppose that soon we shall have an antitoxin for fatigue, to be injected hypodermically at the moment of exhaustion, at the end, say, of the tenth hour, and then at fifteen-minute intervals indefinitely. You see at once the possibilities of the idea. Fortunately, the great body of laborers in this country, through their unions, through the restriction of immigration, through their ability to maintain a standard of living in which there is time for leisure and recreation, through the favorable operation of labor laws in some instances and of public opinion in others, are able to keep the length of the working day well within the limits of physical exhaustion. But as an outside limit the fatigue test, as I have intimated, has its usefulness. I am well aware that there is another evil at the oppo- site end. There is such a thing as laziness. There are those who need a hypodermic injection of antitoxin for something very different from the exhaustion of overwork. Each evil must be dealt with, however, after its kind, and in American industries as a whole the disastrous results of overwork are the more serious of the two. Women reach the danger point earlier than men, and the consequences to the race of their reaching it are more serious. For this reason courts which look but coldly on social legislation in general are showing an inclination to THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER 329 regard with favor laws designed for the protection of women from overwork or excessive physical strain. Chil- dren reach the limit sooner than adults, and this is the cornerstone of the legislation which has now become gen- eral — though by no means as yet universal and by no means uniformly perfect — for the protection of chidren from pre- mature and injurious employment. Some great emergency may justify overexertion, as it may justify the sacrifice of health or of life. But that the mere performance of an appointed task incident to the earn- ing of a bare living should have such consequences is con- trary to the most rudimentary social philosophy. There are many tests of social conditions with which the citizen who feels to the full his civic responsibility must become familiar. He takes account of illiteracy and of the number of children employed, and whether by permission of the law or contrary to law. He notes the statistics of un- employment and of irregular employment, studying what they mean. He watches the patient accumulation of sav- ings and rejoices in the success of postal savings banks. He counts arrests and complaints, and is exasperated at the deficiences in our criminal statistics. He wants to know the number of prisoners confined at a given time, the length of their sentences, the number of paroled, the number on probation under suspended sentence, and the length of the effective probation period. For with crime, as with dis- ease, he is interested fundamentally in prevention, and the test which he would apply to the penal system is as to whether its tendency is to prevent the existence of a class of professional criminals or the contrary. By that test the American system of local jails stands condemned. He is interested in the facts about insanity — not only for the sake of the particular patients who are at the moment in hos- pitals, but quite as much for the sake of learning what relation there is between heredity, nervous strain, worry, overcrowding, intemperance, poverty and specific diseases on the one hand and insanity on the other. He is concerned as to the number of feeble-minded, and recognizes that in allowing the mentally defective, the obviously degenerate, 330 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH to propagate, they are giving the most conspicuoys illustra- tion of social neglect. There is one other criterion of social conditions and social measures which I venture to join to the death rate and the fatigue test as of especial assistance to social work- ers in the shaping of a progressive program. This is their influence upon personal character — I use the word, not in its widest significance, but as opposed to dependence, as signifying independence, self-support, self-respect. There is a sense in which we are all interdependent. We have relations of mutual assistance and service. This kind of dependence is compatible with the highest type of char- acter. There is another sense in which dependence signi- fies degeneration, disintegration of family, and, so far as it goes, of society. Children are naturally dependent upon parents; the aged upon their grown children; wives upon husbands and husbands upon wives ; the sick upon the well members of their family; those who are injured at their work upon the industry in which they are injured; the in- sured upon the funds to which they have contributed ; those who have grown old in service upon the service to which they have given their active working years or upon the sav- ings which that service has made possible. These relations and such as these are evidence of social solidarity, of the mutual interdependence of individuals in society upon one another and upon the social institutions which they have created. The more of such dependence the better. It im- plies no loss of self-respect, no weakening of the fibre of personal character, no impairment of the ultimate resources of society. I cannot help thinking that much of the opposition to municipal action. State action and even national action in fields where we are finding such collective action essential to prevent monopoly and exploitation rests upon the fallacy of confusing these two entirely diflferent and, in fact, di- rectly opposite kinds of dependence. Men cry out against paternalism when, for example, policies of conservation of natural resources or trust regulation or railway regulation are in question. What these policies may mean, however, THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER 331 is merely a recognition of our mutual dependence, our nat- ural social relations to one another, for the very purpose of averting an unnatural, unjust and degrading dependence. Such policies are democratic and social, not paternalistic, and in a free state they may have no tendency to under- mine character, but quite the contrary. Social workers are not, as such, collectivists. Civic responsibility is to be met by individual initiative and individual responsbility rather oftener perhaps than municipal or State action ; but we must not be frightened by any bugbear, even that of Socialism, and there is something wrong either with the sincerity or with the intellect of those who cannot distin- guish between a desirable independence of character which is quite compatible with municipal railways and govern- ment parcels post and that anarchistic independence which means economic isolation and the frustration of liberty in any sense in which liberty is of social advantage. We strive to promote normal dependence. We seek, first of all, to strengthen the family, not necessarily in its remote collateral ramifications, but as a real social unit, having a sound basis in personal relationships. We seek to awaken or to revive the sense of family responsibility. Among our most fundamental and universal tasks is that of family rehabilitation. We recognize the evils of family desertion and divorce, and we are profoundly concerned that the religious and ethical foundations of family life shall be laid ever more securely and safeguarded against new and insidious dangers. We are interested in compen- sation for industrial injuries, for this also is in the direction of social integration. It is neither sound from the social point of view nor decent from the point of view of common humanity to throw the financial burdens resulting from deaths and injuries in industry upon charitable societies, and still less is it decent or tolerable that they should fall upon the individuals injured and their widows and orphans. The original loss, the physical suffering and the bereave- ment fall, of course, upon them. Insurance cannot transfer such losses, though, if well devised, it may tend to prevent accidents. But the financial consequences of industrial in- 332 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH juries may be insured, like those from fire, and they may thus be distributed through the community, falling eventu- ally, as they should, upon the shoulders of the purchasers of the commodities in the manufacture or production of which the lives were lost or the injuries sustained. Mutual assistance within the family and carefully considered in- surance schemes evoke, therefore, our earnest support. The dependence against which we set our faces is that of another and degrading kind, and it is start- ling to discover that there are some things which at first sight seem beneficent or harmless, but which come under the condemnation of the principle that character is to be maintained, dependence to be shunned, like the beginning of death. Indiscriminate alms-giving comes under this condemna- tion. Organized charity is not so much a device for pre- venting waste of funds, though it may do that incidentally. It is far more a means of preventing the waste of human character. For a traveler on a dusty road to share his meal with a chance wayfarer whom he encounters may be but a simple courtesy, marking one of the most attractive, nat- ural and elementary of human relations. To feed habitually the tramp at the kitchen door of the farmhouse, to respond with silver or copper to the importunities of the town beg- gar, or to fill the baskets of those who present themselves at the door of a church or in the offices of a charitable so- ciety, are not simple courtesies, and mark, instead of a natural and wholesome human relation, one which is mutu- ally degrading and most unnatural. The tramp, the vagrant, the beggar, the rounder, knocking at the door of charitable societies, are unnatural social products. As in- dividuals they may indeed and must appeal to our sympa- thies, but it is because we see that they can become some- thing different from what they are. And lightly to give them what they ask is not to make them different, but to confirm them in what they are. A helping hand is one thing ; an open hand is another. The one breaks the chains ; the other rivets them. The one is genuine service ; the other is in effect a gesture of contempt. The one, that of organ- THE CALL OP THE SOCIAL WORKER 333 ized charity, is that of the Good Samaritan, and it stands for character ; the other, that of indiscriminate alms-giving, is that of Dives, and it stands for dependence. We are not told by what virtue Lazarus in the parable is carried to Abraham's bosom, but the fate of Dives offers certainly no encouragement to the indifferent dispensing of crumbs, and, so far as our own observations in this life carry us, the relation appears to be one alike disadvantageous both to the careless giver who does not give himself and to the re- cipient of the crumbs which thus fall from the reckless and extravagant hand. Behind all the phenomena of modern industrial society, favorable and unfavorable, we become conscious of one ex- traordinary fact which differentiates indeed our modern Western communities from others of which we have knowl- edge and which gives an unique character to the social work of our generation. This fact, which Prof. Patten makes the very basis of our new civilization, is the fact of a dis- posable social surplus. We do not find ourselves struggling with a perpetual deficit. You in the South know what an era of deficit, of eco- nomic privation, means — war, illiteracy, pensions, inade- quate capital. But you of the New South, in your pros- perity, in the development of your rich natural resources, in your present great and increasing inheritance, in your more diversified industries, in your new cooperative rela- tions with the North and with the nations, in your world- wide interchange of services and products, in your large scale manufactures, your improved transportation, your better distribution, your organization of agriculture on a scientific and business basis — you also are coming into an era of surplus, into a condition such as you never had, even before the war, a condition in which it is possible not only to satisfy all the ordinary physical wants of man, but to maintain in all classes, not merely among an aristocratic few, but among all men, a standard of living consistent — if I may use the stately language of our great Declaration — consistent with a decent respect for the opinions of man- kind. This change from an age of deficit to an age of sur- plus is one of the most revolutionary conceivable. 334 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH We do not realize our heritage. We do not rationally and justly distribute the products of industry. We do not conserve our resources. We come but slowly to the con- ception of the situation in which we are. Nor even when we do is it rational to make of it a fool's paradise. We know that it is conceivable that the conditions of primitive so- ciety may again prevail. War may ravage us. Revolution and anarchy may overwhelm us. Institutions vital to our welfare, strong as their foundations are, may crumble to the dust. Coal and iron, even soils and forests, may be ex- hausted or wantonly destroyed. Light and learning may disappear in another dark age of superstition. Cunning and rapacity may usurp political and economic power, and the inequality of condition, which is already great, may become so fixed and so extreme as to drive from the human heart every vestage of respect for authority, every instinct of social order, and leave us nothing but unrestrained brute force and a law below that of the jungle. A mawkish senti- mentality, bent upon removing all hardships and inequality, may ultimately overwhelm the good old-fashioned doctrine of personal responsibility, upon which, after all, our eco- nomic and social institutions are founded, and to which the surplus of our age of comparative prosperity is due. We recognize the possibility of these things — nay, the very great probability of some of the worst of them — if existing and recognized evils are not corrected. We are in no fool's paradise. Nevertheless, we do not expect them to happen, and we do expect the evils to be corrected without sacrifice of liberty or of character. We live in an age of surplus. That is the first and fundamental fact for us to grasp. Herein lies the ringing call to social service. We have economic resources with which we can successfully combat an excessive death rate, even as Col. Gorgas and his associates conquered yellow fever in Cuba and made a health resort of the plague-stricken Isthmus of Panama. We have resources, material and scientific, with which we may destroy infection in every one of its strongholds. We have resources, economic and administrative, with which we may protect our food supply, our water supply, our milk THE CALL OP THE SOCIAL WORKER 335 supply. We have resources, financial and educational, scien- tific and administrative, with which we may take children out of mines and factories, relieve the strain of overwork in every industry, stop the exploitation of women, save young offenders from a criminal career, abolish local jails, reform our penal codes and prisons, establish playgrounds in the cities, socialize the curriculum of our schools, re- locate our factories in the social ijiterest, modify our tax laws, and plan our towns so as to stop overcrowding, incon- venience and ugliness. We have resources, legal, economic and moral, with which we may establish a national minimum of hours of labor, of physical exhaustion, of nervous strain — aye, if we will and must, even of wages. We have resources of money and of knowledge so as to do what ought to be done for the sick poor, for the aged infirm, for orphaned children, for the widow with young children dependent upon her, even for the beggar and the tramp, so that there may be no ex- cuse for ill-considered and injurious alms-giving. We have resources of physical power, of human power and of con- science so to manage our industries as to eliminate the con- ditions which destroy life and health, the conditions which make inevitable degeneration and disease. And our great- est resource for the doing of all these things, for the elimi- nation of all cruel exploitation, all stupid oppression, is this : That every such change increases the social surplus instead of depleting it. Some profits there may be that will shrink when industry is humanized, but they are illigiti- mate profits, unsocial and unjust. Some capital, even, may be destroyed, but it is anti-social capital, which we can afford to destroy and cannot afford to preserve. Some labor, even, may become unprofitable, but it is anti-social labor, which must be diverted to social ends. It is not to governmental action primarily that we look for the application of these varied and abundant resources. Governmental action in certain directions there must be, but the voluntary action of socialized capital, the voluntary cooperation of socialized labor, will do in a hundred fields what legislation can never accomplish. The creation of 336 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH standards of public opinion and the enlightenment of the public conscience are forces far more potent than acts of Legislatures or decisions of courts. There are some hundreds of thousands of needless deaths every year in this country from preventable diseases. It has been so in the past, but the situation is different now from what it was, because we know more about dis- eases and because we have larger resources. The revolu- tionary change is tTiat we have a surplus at our disposal, and that we have determined no longer merely to relieve acute disease. We intend also to prevent it. Prevention costs money, but in the long run it cost^ less than disease. The expenditure is at a different time. It is made in a different way. It is made for a different purpose. We must admit that it comes partly from the pockets of differ- ent people. Not the sick or diseased as such, not the wid- ows and orphans as such, not the maimed and crippled as such, but the taxpayers are those who must bear the burden of prevention, and this, from a social standpoint, is as it should be. Dr. John H. Pryor summed it up once for all in his plea for sanatoria for incipient cases of tuberculosis. We are to care for the consumptive at the right time and in the right place and in the right way until he is cured, rather than at the wrong time and in the wrong place and in the wrong way until he is dead. The method of prevention is to seek out and, if possible, cure early and curable dis- ease and physical defect, rather than to neglect the seeds of disease until it disables permanently or kills. This means the erection of suitable hospitals and sanatoria. It means dispensaries and convalescent care. It means, above all, popular instruction. It means professionally-trained health officers who are not in politics, and enough of them. It means cooperation among medical and hygienic bodies, public and private, and it means high standards of public service in the medical profession, of which standards every State already furnishes brilliant examples. It means great medical schools and laboratories, and again, above all, cam- paigns of education proceeding from these centers of re- search and education and from national and State asso- THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER 337 ciations and committees formed for the purpose. In these bodies, under the inspiration and guidance of the medical profession, public-spirited laymen may well cooperate. Through them we are learning to use the power and influ- ence of the public press, of the pulpit, of the labor union, of the Woman's Club and other appropriate channels of public education. Already an influential national association of this kind is engaged in the study and prevention of tubercu- losis, with all kinds of local affiliated bodies. B'esides this association and several strictly medical societies, there are associations or committees to combat, respectively, infant mortality, blindness and venereal diseases, while the Hous- ing Reform Associations, the Consumers' Leagues, the Child Labor Committees and the Playground Associations may be regarded, whatever else they are in addition, as integral parts of a national health campaign. The health campaign is fundamental. We may well for the time being concen- trate a large part of our attention upon it. We may give our utmost support to the movement for a Federal Public Health Service, and may well denounce as beneath contempt the opposition to that movement organized by quack prac- titioners and patent medicine proprietors. We may well feel righteous anger at the persistent attacks upon the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agricul- ture which has finally cost us another faithful servant of the conservation principle, and I care not whether you ex- plain it by administrative inaptitude or by exploiting self- ishness. Health is much. It is not everything. Yet if we turn again to the industrial problem we shall find that a large part of it is nothing else than a health problem in a new form. So true is it that both the labor movement and the educational movement are intricately involved in the health movement that it has seemed to me that the new Federal department, when we get it, should be not a health depart- ment alone, but a Health, Labor and Education Depart- ment — in other words, a department — call it the Depart- ment of the Interior, if you like — charged with the respon- sibility for the social welfare in these, its three chief 338 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH aspects — industry, education and health. The prevention of all employment of young children for wages and the re- tention of adolescents, even from fourteen to eighteen or tw^enty, for half their time under educational influences, the prevention of all physically injurious labor by young people and by women, the prevention of excessive hours and of an unbroken week, even by adult men — the estab- lishment in these and other respects of certain definite min- imum standards, to which all employers are required, either by public opinion, or, if necessary, by law, to conform, and the elimination of sweated trades where they exist, are ele- mentary features of an industrial program which is the logical development of our existing factory and child labor laws. Insurance against industrial injuries on some plan of adequate and rational compensation for such injuries to replace our obsolete, unjust and inhumane employers' lia- bility laws cannot be delayed. We must begin now, where we have not already begun, and we must carry on the agita- tion by whatever routes the courts leave open to us; or, if they leave none open, then by the education of the courts, for that is a route also, until this monstrous injustice is righted. Health and industry, recreation and organized charity offer fields overripe for consecrated, disinterested and trained service. If the citizen, awakened to a new sense of civic responsibility, happen at the same time to be a physician, an employer, labor leader, a school man, a judge, a police administrator or a prison official, so much the bet- ter promise of results from his efforts. If he happen to be a professional reformer of an obnoxious type, who dips into many things without understanding any, so much the worse for him and the cause to which he attaches his name. The death rate, the fatigue test and the character test, although they are not our only tests, are more or less con- sciously applied in all these movements. From another point of view, sanitary reform, industrial reform and edu- cational reform are all parts of a conservation movement. They are all inimical to wanton waste. They are all in har- mony with the determination to make the most of our re- THE CALL OF THE SOCIAL WORKER 339 sources and our opportunities. Development of resources by the methods of conservation, strenuous opposition to wasteful exploitation and abuse are its watchwords. They all assume an interest in the welfare of posterity, and that in living generations the interests of the whole are superior to those of any part. Thus they rest upon the conception of the nation as a living and enduring growth. They put life above property, but they recognize the legitimacy of property also. They put character above profits, but they recognize the place of legitimate profits also as a regulator of enterprise. They demand that business and industry shall be carried on above the level fixed by the vital inter- ests of the race, but they believe that it can be carried on above that level. They have respect for economic laws and sociological principles, but they recognize as motives to human conduct, whether collective or personal, not merely the desire to get wealth and to escape effort, but also such desires as those to which religion, and morality, and altru- ism, and honor, and parental love, and democracy have al- ways made their appeal. These movements are founded, it may be, upon a con- sciousness of kind, that fundamental principle of social sol- idarity which Prof. Giddings has formulated, but the kin- ship of which social workers in these organized move- ments become conscious is not, like Hamlet's, less than kind. It is the human kinship, democratic, fraternal, social. Social workers are not Utopians. They are sober citizens of the existing state, yet the community which they have in their mind's eye as the goal of their diversified and co- ordinated endeavors is one of strong self-restraint and healthy men and women, one in which premature death shall have been conquered ; in which feeble-mindedness shall have been abolished; in which childhood shall be protected and nurtured; in which neither men nor women shall be exploited for gain; in which toil, though it may still be severe, will not be destructive; in which heredity and en- vironment shall be joined in a holy wedlock, of which high physical and moral character shall be the offspring; in which there shall be leisure and opportunity for the growth 340 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH of the spirit; in which always and everywhere men shall rule things, being worthy to rule, and knowing no domina- tion save that of spontaneous loyalty and the highest and best that the mind of man has conceived or that God has revealed to us. QUALIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS. PROFESSOR GRAHAM TAYLOR, 0.D., L L.D., PRESIDENT OF CHICAGO SCHOOL OF CIVICS AND PHILANTHROPY. It is certainly significant, perhaps instinctive, that we have left to this concluding session of the Congress the con- sideration of the educational sources and resources of the social movement. For all life has the instinct to protect and perpetuate itself. That this social movement has this in- stinct of self-preservation and self-progress shows that it is a movement of life, and not merely the movement of any man or set of men — not the movement of any section or any nation — a leaderless movement, except as life is always led by God. This social movement is one of those spontaneous, elemental, primal things, sporadic now, continuous then, having all the wonderful vicissitudes and characteristics of life that make a man take his hat from his head and his shoes from his feet as he stands in the presence of the life- giver, whose life is moving the lives of men. Its leaders have been led by it. They have been lifted up and borne on by it. They have been only like the crest of an advancing wave which shines in the sunlight as it passes. Of all the movements of life, this, that is most human and most vital, seems to have been the last to formulate its instinct of self-preservation, self-perpetuation and self- progression into an educational policy. But perhaps it is to the credit of the social movement that it has dealt more with life than literature, more with men than with books, QUALIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS 341 more with deeds than with methods, more with practice than with theory. This is in line with the modern move- ment of mind, rising, as it does, from the concrete to the abstract, from the simple to the complex, from the specific to the general. Thus the social movement, out of its experi- ences with life, has gradually formulated for itself a litera- ture, schools of thought and agencies for training to pro- vide preparation for the greater work that is still before us. These human movements which are just taking on edu- cational forms are four — the movement for more effective philanthropy, the movement for better civic administration, the movement that is humanizing industry, and the move- ment to socialize and humanize religion. These four line^ of the social movement at once formulate the call to a new profession — the call for a new army of volunteers. This call of the field standardizes new requirements for social work and defines the qualifications for social workers. In the arts and professions that are most closely con- nected with philanthropic effort the standards of require- ments have certainly risen steadily, and latterly very rap- idly. The professions of medicine and surgery have stead- ily raised their requirements and their standards until now in all the best medical schools a stiff four years' course is demanded for graduates; and our States are setting higher standards throughout the country for the recogni- tion of medical practitioners as they enter upon that most exacting profession. Nursing has risen with it from almost a servile occupation to a professional status because of the expert training which has been given the nurse. But in the callings for the relief of dependency and the administration of all the agencies of child welfare, which equally deserve to be called exacting professions, there has prevailed almost to the present time what William H. Allen, in his "Efficient Democracy," calls the "goodness fallacy." This fallacy — that one only has to be good to do good — has long prevailed, both in philanthropy and religion. All the exactions of mod- ern standards require us to be better than good. Efficiency, with goodness taken for granted, is the order of our day. The social worker must not only have the right kind of 342 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH character and spirit, but also the qualification of knowing how to bring to bear that character and all that his or her personality contains upon the work. So in philanthropy we have come more and more to the scientific method of procedure. Charity organization so- cieties have led the way to this by the emphasis they have placed upon making and studying the case record. In the "case" we deal with actual, concrete, discoverable facts. We are in touch with original data, and we rise according to the scientific method — from the fact to the principle, from the example to the rule. Whoever has heard Miss Mary E. Richmond lecture to a class on the educational value of the case record has had a revelation of the skillful way in which bare facts may be combined with the best principles and the methods derived from experience for the relief and rehabilitation of a de- pendent family. Under this scientific attitude of mind, under this new self-exacting regimen, to which charity workers are more and more squaring themselves, the whole administration of charity is becoming a new thing. It becomes more con- structive. It deals less with consequences than with causes. It does not attempt merely to relieve, but to prevent. It aims to form more than to reform. It becomes an affirma- tive and constructive science, and calls for the very best that is in us — the best of originality, the best of insight, the best of synthesis, and the best methods in applying to each case and to every condition all that we can get out of the whole range of discoverable facts and the consensus of experience. At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the New York Char- ity Organization Society it was admitted that, when this so- ciety began, dependency used to be considered as more or less of a fixed status, in which certain classes of people were placed more by the inscrutable providence of Almighty God than by the victim's own fault. But its president affirmed that after twenty-five years this same society had come to the conclusion that poverty is "a preventable dis- ease." He also showed how the responsibility for poverty QUALIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS 343 and the conditions which produce it are no longer to be attributed wholly to a state of heart or to a lack of will, but also to those conditions for which the community at large is more responsible than the victim who suffers from these conditions. In proof of this he added that, were it not for the "new law tenement houses" in New York City, that very night one million of his fellow-citizens would be living in rooms whose only light and air came through other apartments. He did not say, in his modesty, that he more than any or all other men was to be credited with putting that law upon the statute books of the Empire State. Such a monument has not been raised to a man in this genera- tion as that law, which let a million of his fellow-citizens out into God's fresh air and sunlight. No longer need we contemptuously repeat John Boyle O'Reilly's lines, "Organized charity, scrimped and iced In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ," For organized charity has in it not only the root of the mat- ter in systematizing charity upon a business basis, but it has also the sweetest flower and fragrance of philanthropy in all the humanizing, expanding and world-wide reach that has now taken possession of this wonderful movement. Thus the scope of those who deal with poverty came to include preventive and constructive efforts — almost the re- making of life. Higher qualifications of mind and heart, of insight and application, are thus demanded than were to be discovered in most of the earlier administrators of relief. New requirements for really effective charity work are exacted by ways in which prevention is attempted, in which the death-dealing diseases are anticipated, in which every tenement become a field and parish for the cooperation of the charity worker, the building department, the sanitary inspector, as well as for the priest and the minister of re- ligion. The qualifications to which charity workers must square are certainly more scientific, but more human ; more 344 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH economic, but no less spiritual ; more earthward, but no less heavenly and divine. We are so closely impinging upon the next movement of life that we cross the frontier of it without knowing that we have left the other region. For we cannot long be en- gaged in the practice of modern charity until we find our- selves in the sphere of civic administration where another set of qualifications are demanded. Our volunteer agencies in every large community are the smallest part of its hu- manitarian work. The greatest charity agencies are the county and the State. The volunteer agencies, however great, cannot do their work without having tributary to them the authority of the law, the tremendously greater administrative facilities of the State, the departments of the city and county governments. Again, let us call attention to the strange disparity be- tween the preparation that is required for this public hu- manitarian service and for the practice of the profession of the law, which is most closely allied with government. More and more the standards of that profession are being raised. More and more we will employ only those lawyers who have had the best training afforded by the law school and experience in a reputable lawyer's office. But when we elect or appoint men to administer the great affairs of our most populous counties we do not seem to think that prepa- ration is necessary or training is essential. Cook County, which includes Chicago, expends thirteen and a half million of dollars a year. It applies public relief to 8,000 families, including 37,000 dependent people. It furnishes hospital treatment to 31,826 patients and medical aid to 18,442 more. Through its detention hospital 2,000 mentally afflicted peo- ple pass every year. It has the care of all the Juvenile Court wards. It is responsible for the county jail, which almost everywhere is a seeding-down place for crime and delin- quency. And yet grossly incompetent men are nominated and elected to be in charge of that vast public business, and appoint others to administer their agencies and institutions, who would not be considered for one moment as the man- ager of even a small-sized private corporation. In the bad QUALIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS 345 old times of Chicago's history the man who was at the head of the Finance Committee of the greatest corporation in the city of Chicago — namely, the corporation of the city of Chi- cago itself — was notorious as the keeper of a liquor and gambling saloon, a man who would not be trusted with the management of any large private business, and yet for six years that man was the chief financier of the second great- est city of the United States and the fourth greatest city of the world. Why? Because we are insane on the subject of party politics. There is no other reason. Now, I know well enough that the American governmental system in- volves parties. I recognize their sphere. I recognize the honorable position of leadership in parties. But I say that sanity requires us to eliminate from the party system of government certain non-political positions which have only an administrative function, and upon the efficiency of which administration depends not merely many dollars, but human lives; not only the management of great public business, but also the destiny of human beings whose hearts can break, whose nerves can be racked. It is the most awful abdication of responsibility to accept these most helpless and calamitously afflicted of human kind as public wards and then hand them over to the inefficient, if not corrupt, exploitation of men whose only idea is either self-aggran- dizement or party spoils. In and about the State penitentiary of Nebraska there has recently been a series of tragedies in which eight men were killed in forty-eight days — four officers, three con- victs and a citizen. Why? Because of the outrageous mal- administration of a public institution. Why was this prison so badly administered ? Because there was no civil service. Why was there no civil service? Because the prison ap- pointments, not only in Nebraska, but in most of the States of the Union, are considered to be perquisites of political parties. Some men are thus appointed to the delicate and difl[icult tasks of standing at the crisis of the lives of hun- dreds of young men whose only qualification is that they have rendered the party or men in power some political service, or that they can knock a man down, or curse more 346 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH than he can, or show themselves as diabolical as the worst of their prisoners. If anything can be a greater crime in a Christian civilization, I know not what it is than to con- fine men where they cannot get out and then to surround them by influences that make them ten times more the chil- dren of hell than if we had never taken them in hand. And yet a gray-haired man — saint, I think he called himself, but I call him a sinner — said to me: "If those men are such fools or such knaves as to get into such a place, I don't care what happens to them after they get in there." The best reply to that sentiment is to ask whether he does not care what would happen to himself and others after these still more dangerous men get out. Does it not seem reasonable that if we are raising the requirements for the practice of the legal profession we ought to have civic requirements for the practice of what ought to be considered the new professions of public office? Should we not regard those public offices as positions for social workers? Schools of civics and philanthropy ought to be preparing people for the eligible lists in the civil serv- ice of their country, their State, their county and their town. They are positions for which more and more exact- ing standards should be required and for which special preparation should be furnished. High appreciation is due the Civil Service Commission of Chicago for devising one of the most ingenious educational methods for testing effi- ciency and keeping men up to a rising standard in the fire department, in the police department and in the other municipal departments. It works with the automatic smoothness of a guillotine in cutting off the heads of ineffi- cient and perhaps otherwise unworthy officials. Police officials, whom we could not possibly have proven to have been grafters, simply fell down in efficiency and did not measure up to the standards of this wonderfully adjusted mechanism of the Chicago Civil Service Commission in measuring efficiency. If that can be done in public service, it can be done in all our private agencies and institutions, and we who are in that service should want it done. We should not only QUALIFICATIONS OP SOCIAL WORKERS 347 require such tests applied to others, but we should want them applied to ourselves. One of the best things that has ever happened to the volunteer philanthropic agencies in the city of Chicago has been the establishment of the Sub- scriptions Investigation Committee by the Chicago Asso- ciation of Commerce. They pass upon the solvency and integrity not only, but the accounting and efficiency of all the agencies which they endorse as worthy to receive con- tributions. The way the efficiency of these agencies has thus been standardized and their accounting brought to business regularity and uniformity is equaled only by the same standardizing of the office work and efficiency of ad- ministration in the public departments of the city of New York by the Bureau of Municipal Research and in Chicago by the Bureau of Public Efficiency. \ The just, honest and sincere workers have nothing to fear from these increasing tests, but the public has much to gain by them. None of us should whine or squirm the least bit, either as directors, managers or employes in all these varied branches of the great public service in which we are engaged, by having required of us the very highest standards of efficiency. And now the humanizing of industries brings us face to face with the same sort of contrast in the qualifications required in kindred lines of work. The requirements now being exacted in business are higher and more rigid every- where. In great machine shops and electrical works hun- dreds of college men are to be found working. All over this country the most exacting standards are being increasingly required of those upon whose efficiency success depends in the office, in operating machinery, in the handling of ma- terials, in marketing products and in all the profit-making conditions of such great enterprises. But until compara- tively recently the human element of these very same plants has been strangely, ignorantly and almost suicidally ignored. The scene when the survey of the city of Pitts- burg was rounded up was memorable. Most of the audience had seen the wonderful exhibits which had visualized, ob- jectified, dramatized, if you will, what had been found by 348 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH the nearly two years' work of from fifteen to twenty-five expert workers, at a cost of nearly thirty thousand dollars. The needless deaths that had taken place in Pittsburg, principally because of bad working conditions, were shown by a frieze of white paper on which were silhouetted figures of men, women and children following each other about four inches apart. Every figure stood for a dead man, a dead woman and a dead child who had died unnecessarily. That procession of the dead was a weird and gruesome thing. It brought people to their senses. That city had the highest death rate from typhoid fever of any town in the United States for more than twenty years. The rich bought pure water and lived; the poor drank the polluted water and died. Five hundred and twenty-six cases of fatal casualties among the workers of Allegheny County were found and the facts about them presented. A prominent citizen publicly declared that, simply on the ground of econ- omy, Pittsburg might better take one of its steel mills every year and throw it into the depths of the sea, with its capitalization yielding ten per cent income, than to have lost this invaluable laboring life. That did not measure the loss, however. I thought of what I had seen at Cherry when that mine went up in smoke and flames. To see around that mine's mouth three hundred and ninety fatherless children, and those widows who sat there in the chill November pressing their babes to their breasts, was a scene to make you think that there ought to be something more human in industry, and that somehow or other social workers had better go home and get close to the Legisla- ture. I was grateful, as one of them, to be on the Mining Investigation Commission of Illinois and to have a part in framing laws to conserve life and the coal deposits in the mining industry of the State. Our social workers should be able to influence Legisla- tures and captains of industry to prompt or promote their already gratifying advance toward recognizing and pro- tecting the human values in industry. The Child Labor Commission is doing this well, the Consumers' League QUALIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS 349 also. To the leaders of those two organizations we owe the Federal Children's Bureau recently established by Con- gress, at the head of which the President has appointed Julia C. Lathrop. None is worthier to be the first woman placed in charge of a Federal bureau than she whom we all recognize as foremost among the social workers of Illinois. The requirements of the social worker are, thereford', to be measured by the exactions of philanthropic, civic and industrial progress. But to these movements of life and to the efforts to meet their demands the social application of religion is essential. Mazzini truly said that every economic or industrial problem is at the bottom a religious problem. It is also true that many religious problems have economic and industrial factors, without reckoning with which they cannot be solved. There is a new kind of revival of religion sweeping over the country. The Men and Religion Forward Move- ment is stirring men in the churches to work for and with their own communities as never before. It shows that the "burden of the soul" is not off, but on ; that more folks care for others than ever before in the history of the world; that we care in more ways, though not as much, perhaps, in one way; that there is more care for more folks and more kinds of care taken in bearing the burden of the soul now than hitherto. If this civic and social awakening progresses it is not going to be possible much longer to have communi- ties of Christians that are not Christian communities. That is just what we now have — the most self -stultifying and demoralizing ethical dualism — communities of Christians that are pagan communities. Do not be driven to the alternative of saying that you must either work for the in- dividual or for his surroundings. Work both ends of the line at once. You cannot work for the individual success- fully without working for his surroundings. Moreover, if good men help to make surroundings better, good surround- ings also help to make men good. So it goes, back and forth, like the pendulum of the clock, and I am going to swing it both ways to get it going either way. 350 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH So, then, when religion gets its social conscience, as it is rapidly doing, and when to be a good Christian means to be an altruist and an intelligent, serviceable altruist, too ; and when we cannot discriminate between our Christianity and our citizenship; and when we cannot consider our pri- vate interests quite apart from our public interests — then a new day will dawn, both for the Church and for our country. For then religion will supply the highest ideal, sanction and self-sacrifice which are needed to meet the re- quirements and to acquire the qualifications demanded by the field. Summing them all up, what are they? First, a back- ground of better school and academic training, with more emphasis upon social ethics, upon economics, upon psychol- ogy, upon hygiene and sex hygiene. Intelligence in infant welfare work is the underlying specialization. For if we do not give people a better chance to be born and grow up right the first time, they will have much less of a chance to be born at all or to stay born a second time. I am not derogating one whit from the im- portance of that imperative mandate, "Ye must be born again," but I say that that proposition has as its very first corollary the right of every child to be fairly, justly, well born and nurtured. That cannot be brought about except by education and by stopping the birth of the unfit. But that can be done. Special training in the technique of the social arts is required for social work such as is offered by the schools of philanthropy, or, as we prefer to call ours, "The School of Civics and Philanthropy." There the stu- dent from the high school or college is brought into direct contact with men and women who are doing the things that the student wants to learn how to do. In two ways stu- dents acquire this technique from these specialists — first, by hearing some of them lecture on the social arts they are practicing, and seeing others doing their work on the fields, where they are conferred with about it; and, second, by doing practice work themselves on these fields under expert supervision. For observing such clinical practice and for gaining ex- QUALIFICATIONS OP SOCIAL WORKERS 351 perience in such apprenticeships a great city is a wonder- ful laboratory, whose resources are thus only beginning to be developed and connected with the instruction of the classroom. Thus only is it possible to acquire first-hand contact with conditions of life and labor and insight upon the agencies, movements and methods which are effectively at work to improve them. Supplementing this field work for general training, the department of social investiga- tion specializes upon methods of inquiry into the facts of actual conditions and of interpreting their meaning to the public. Thus for the first time a patient inquiry was conducted by men and women holding the studentships of this department into the causes and public treatment of juvenile delinquency. To this end 14,183 cases before the Juvenile Court of Chicago during its first ten years were reviewed, 741 of which were investigated with special ref- erence to the dealing of the court with delinquents and the bearing of it upon the causes and prevention of delinquency. The technique required to attain such results is both theo- retical and practical. But if, in the judgment of their teachers, the students requiring this technique do not have it in them to do good, sane, sound, practical wrok, in justice to the field as well as to themselves, they should be so in- formed, and the certificate of the school withheld from them. The field needs men and women who know how, who have the human touch, the ability to put one's self in the other's place, the capacity to act upon John Bunyan's prologue to the Pilgrim's Progress, "Oh, then, some hither, lay thy head, thy heart, my book together." What is the use of knowing the book if you do not know the head and the heart, or the head and heart if you do not know some of the principles in the book? Head, heart and book must be brought together in the social worker's personality. What manner of man or woman ought we to be? Our personality — what ought it to be? The sum total of the points of contact we have in common with Father God and fellow-man. And individuality? It is the contour, the shape, the tone, the color that distinguishes one of us from the other. But the sum total of the points in common we 352 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH have with God and man really makes the person. The more points in common we have the more of the race life surges through our veins; the more God and man meet in us the more earth and heaven touch, spirit and matter are one, and religion has its perfect way. For what is religion? It is relationship — that is all; nothing more; nothing less; what everyone and the one God, every man and every other man should have to do with each other. Thus religion must be horizontal to be perpendicular. It must go out if it goes up. You will not get very near God if you do not get very close to the human in yourself and in your fellows. "And take not the sacrament of the people's service un- worthily." Thus are we enjoined by the venerable Canon of Westminster, who founded Toynbee Hall, the first social settlement. Service is sacramental, but as sacramental it is not only stern and serious in its exactions, but it pulsates with the very joy of God. May that joy be yours. The only response worthy of it or of us is to enter the field of volunteer or professional work whole-heartedly with the best qualifications which we have attained or can acquire. X. ORGANIZATION Constitution and By-Laws of the Southern Sociological Congress Organization of the Congress Membership List Bibliography on Departments Index of Speakers and Officers Index of Subjects CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS. PURPOSES AND MEMBERSHIP. The purposes of the Southern Sociological Congress are to study and improve social, civic and economic conditions in the South. Its membership shall be composed of all per- sons interested in its work who shall register their names and pay the annual fee. The members shall be of the fol- lowing classes : Regular members, $2.00 per year ; sustain- ing members, $10.00; life members, $100.00. Any person paying any of these fees shall receive a copy of the proceed- ings and of any other publications of the Congress. Dele- gates to the Congress may be appointed by the Governor of each State cooperating with it, by Mayors of cities in these States, and by organizations and institutions engaged in social service, and, upon payment of the membership fees, shall be entitled to all privileges. MEETINGS. The Southern Sociological Congress shall meet once each year, at such time and place as may be designated by the Committee on Time and Place, except that it shall meet with the National Conference of Charities and Correction when it meets in the South. During each meeting the Presi- dent shall appoint a committee of five members whose duty it shall be to determine the time and place of the next meet- ing, the amount for local and general expenses to be raised by the local committee, and announce its conclusion within three months after its appointment. All invitations from cities shall be referred to this committee. There shall be a local committee in each city having a meeting of the Con- gress, and it shall be the duty of this committee to provide any necessary funds and make all local arrangements for the meeting satisfactory to the Executive Committee, 356 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH OFFICERS. The officers of the Southern Sociological Congress shall be a President, First and Second Vice-Presidents, a General Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Corresponding Secretary for each State. All of these officers shall be elected annu- ally by the Congress upon nomination of the Committee on Organization. COMMITTEES. The standing committees shall be an Executive Com- mittee; a committee on each subject which it is proposed to discuss at the next meeting of the Congress, to be appointed by the Committee on Organization; and a committee, com- posed of the Chairmen of these standing committees, whose duty it shall be to report a social program before the close of the Congress, and to which committee all resolutions shall be referred without debate. The Executive Committee shall consist of the President, the Treasurer, one member from each Southern State, to be elected annually by the Congress, together with the ex- Presidents of the Congress. The members of the other standing committees shall likewise be elected annually. The President shall at the opening session appoint a Committee on Organization, whose duty it shall be to select topics for discussion and nominate officers and committees for the following Congress. The Executive Committee shall have power to transact all necessary business in the interim between the meetings. It may appoint sub-committees to attend to matters of de- tail. Meetings of the committee shall be called by the Pres- ident, and five members shall constitute a quorum during the sessions of the Congress and three members in the in- terim between meetings. DUTIES OF OFFICERS. The President shall be the chief executive officer and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Congress. He CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS OF THE CONGRESS 357 shall generally supervise the work of the committees, and shall have power to accept resignations and fill vacancies among the officers or committees. In the event of a vacancy in the office of President, it shall be filled by the First Vice- President; and in the event of a vacancy in the office of First Vice-President, it shall be filled by the Second Vice- President. The General Secretary shall be ex officio Secretary of the Executive Committee. He shall conduct the correspond- ence of the Congress with officers, committees and others under the direction of the President. He shall distribute the announcements and programs and keep a correct role of members. He shall receive all membership fees and pro- ceeds of sales of the reports of the proceedings, and pay the same promptly to the Treasurer. He shall receive such compensation and allowance for expenses as may be fixed by the Executive Committee, and shall perform such other duties as shall be ordered by the Executive Committee. The Treasurer shall receive and disburse all moneys of the Congress. All disbursements shall be made only upon the order of the General Secretary, approved by the Presi- dent or by some member of the Executive Committee to be named by the President. The retiring President of the Congress and the General Secretary shall have charge of the editing and publishing of the Proceedings. The Corresponding Secretaries shall endeavor to stimu- late interest in the Congress in their respective States, and shall render annual reports to the General Secretary as to social, civic and economic progress within the said States. PROGRAM AND PROCEDURE. The program for each annual meeting shall be arranged by the President in consultation with the Chairman of each standing committee, and it shall be submitted to the Execu- tive Committee for its approval. All papers shall first be presented to the Executive Com- mittee before they are read to the Congress. 358 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH AMENDMENTS. These by-laws may be amended by a majority vote at any meeting of the Congress, provided that all amendments shall first be submitted to the Executive Committee. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CONGRESS PRELIMINARY ORGANIZATION. Governor Ben W. Hooper President Mr. J. E. McCuIloch Executive Secretary- Mr. W, R. Cole Treasurer EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Mr. John H. DeWitt Chairman Dr. G. W. Dyer Vice-Chairman Mr. J. E. McCulloch Secretary Mr. W. R. Cole Treasurer Mr. J. D. Strain Exhibit Mr. John Early Finance Dr. G. H. Detwiler Arrangements Dr. Mercer P. Logan Entertainment Mr. A. P. Foster Publicity Mrs. S. S. Crockett Program Mr. Joseph Frank Transportation PERMANENT ORGANIZATION. OFFICERS. President Governor Ben W. Hooper, Nashville, Tenn. First Vice-President Dr. A. J. McKelway, Washington, D. C. Second Vice-President .... Miss Kate Barnard, Oklahoma City, Okla. General Secretary Mr. J. E. McCulloch, Nashville, Tenn. Treasurer Mr. M. E. Holderness, Nashville, Tenn. Founder Mrs. E. W. Cole, Nashville, Tenn. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Alabama Mrs. W. L. Murdock, Birmingham Arkansas Prof. C. H. Brough, Fayetteville District of Columbia Dr. Wickliffe Rose, Washington Florida Prof. L. L. Bernard, Gainesville ORGANIZATION OF THE CONGRESS 359 Georgia Mr. W. Woods White, Atlanta Kentucky Mr. Bernard Flexner, Louisville Louisiana Miss Agnes Morris, Baton Rouge Maryland Mr. H. Wirt Steele, Baltimore Mississippi Mr. A. T. Stovall, Okalona Missouri Prof. C. A. Ellwood, Columbia North Carolina Mr. Clarence Poe, Raleigh Oklahoma Mr. H. Huson, Oklahoma City South Carolina Judge J. A. McCullough, Greenville Tennessee Mr. W. R. Cole, Nashville Texas Prof. C. S. Potts, Austin Virginia Dr. J. T. Mastin, Richmond West Virginia Governor Wm. E. Glasscock, Charleston STATE COREESPONDING SECRETARIES. Alabama Judge W. H. Thomas, Montgomery Arkansas Mr. M. A. Auerbach, Little Rock District of Columbia Mr. Walter G. Ufford, Washington Florida Dr. Lincoln Hulley, DeLand Georgia Miss Rosa G. Lowe, Atlanta Kentucky Mrs. Morris Belknap, Louisville Louisiana Miss Jean M. Gordon, New Orleans Maryland Mr. J. W. Magruder, Baltimore Mississippi Mr. Alfred Holt Stone, Dunleith Missouri Mr. Roger N. Baldwin, St. Louis North Carolina Miss Daisy Denson, Raleigh Oklahoma Miss Kate Barnard, Oklahoma City South Carolina Miss E. McCIintock, Columbia Tennessee . Mr. J. P. Kranz, Memphis Texas Mr. Thomas Finty, Jr., Dallas Virginia Dr. E. G. Williams, Richmond West Virginia Prof. P. B. Reynolds, Morgantown STANDING COMMITTEES. SOCIAL PROGRAM AND RESOLUTIONS. Dr. W. S. Rankin Raleigh, N. C. Mr. John H. DeWitt Nashville, Tenn. Dr. A. J. McKelway Washington, D. C. Mr. J. C. Logan Atlanta, Ga. Dr. J. H. Dillard New Orleans, La. Dr. John A. Rice Fort Worth, Tex. 360 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH PUBLIC HEALTH. Dr. W. S. Rankin, Chairman. Col. J. L. Ludlow Dr. C. W. Stiles Dr. W. S. Leathers Dr. E. G. Williams Dr. Hiram Byrd Mr. E. G. Routzahn Dr. W. F. Drewry Miss Rosa G. Lowe Mr. R. J. Newton Dr. Seale Harris Surgeon C. P. Wertenbaker Dr. Oscar Dowling Mr. W. M. McGrath Mrs. S. S. Crockett Mr. John J. Eagan Hon. Richmond Pearson Hobson COURTS AND PRISONS. Mr. John H. DeWitt, Chairman Judge J. A. McCullough Judge Julian W. Mack Mr. L. M. Weakley Prof. C. S. Potts Capt. Ben Cabell Mr. L. A. Halbert Judge Wm. H. Thomas Mr. Walter McElreath Mr. Phillip Weltner Mr. James Buchanan Mr. D. C. Barr Mrs Salina M. Holman CHILD WELFARE. Dr. A. J. McKelway, Chairman Miss Julia Lathrop Mrs. W. L. Murdock Mrs. James M. Baker Mr. Marcus C. Fagg Mr. Geo. L. Sehon Mr. C. P. Fahey Mrs. J. M. McCormick Chancellor J. H. Kirkland Miss Jean M. Gordon Mr. A. T. Jamieson Mrs. Beverly B. Munford ORGANIZED CHARITIES. Mr. J. C. Logan, Chairman Mr. Maurice Willows Mr. C. M. Hubbard Mr. J. P. Kranz Rev. E. A. Waldron Miss Flora Sayler Mr. L. B. Myers Prof. J. L. Cuninggim Miss Theodora Jacobs Rabbi Ehrenreich Mr. W. G. Brorein REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL PROGRAM 361 NEGRO PROBLEMS. Dr. J. H. Dillard, Chairman Rev. C. B. Wilmer Prof. E. C. Branson Rev. J. G. Snedecor Dr. H. B. Frissell Dr. J. D. Hammond Bishop W. P. Thirkield Mr. A. J. Barton Miss Belle H. Bennett Mr. Alfred Holt Stone Dr. George A. Gates Rev. John Little Mr. G. H. Huckaby Dr. Geo. W. Hubbard Dr. W. D. Weatherford Bishop W. R. Lambuth CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE. Dr. John A. Rice, Chairman Dr. John E. White Dr. G. H. Detwiler Dr. Ira Landrith Rev. Chas. E. Diehl Miss Mabel K. Howell Dr. James I. Vance Prof. Gus W. Dyer Mr. John A. Patten Mr. Wm. H. Sample Rev. W. R. Hendrix Prof. S. C. Mitchell The Executive Committee is empowered to add names to the standing committees at their discretion. The Execu- tive Committee is constituted the Committee on Time and Place for holding the next Congress. REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL PROGRAM. Numerous resolutions have been referred to your com- mittee, which have been carefully considered. It was the sense of the committee that, in lieu of the adoption of specific resolutions, we should formulate a social program, sum- ming up the discussions of this Congress, as provided for in the Constitution. To us it seems that this Congress must stand : For the abolition of the convict lease and contract sys- tems, and for the adoption of modern principles of prison reform. For the extension and improvement of juvenile courts and juvenile reformatories. For the proper care and treatment of defectives, the 362 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH blind, the deaf, the insane, the epileptic and the feeble- minded. For the recognition of the relation of alcoholism to dis- ease, to crime, to pauperism and to vice, and for the adop- tion of appropriate preventive measures. For the adoption of uniform laws of the highest stand- ards concerning marriage and divorce. For the adoption of the uniform law on vital statis- tics. For the abolition of child labor by the enactment of the uniform child labor law. For the enactment of school attendance laws, that the reproach of the greatest degree of illiteracy may be re- moved from our section. For the suppression of prostitution. For the solving of the race question in a spirit of help- fulness to the negro and of equal justice to both races. For the closest cooperation between the church and all social agencies for the securing of these results. RESOLUTIONS OF THANKS ADOPTED BY THE CONGRESS. Resolved, That the first Southern Sociological Congress acknowledges its indebtedness and its lasting obligation to the citizens of Nashville who conceived the idea of its crea- tion, and at great sacrifice of energy and means have car- ried it forward to its present successful consummation; to the citizens of Nashville generally for their abounding hos- pitahty and their sympathetic attitude toward the purpose of this Congress; to the First Presbyterian Church of this city for the use of the auditorium and office room, and to other organizations that have furnished facilities for the meeting of the Congress; to the railroads for reduction in rates of transportation and for other courtesies extended; to the Associated Press and the newspapers for the reports of our proceedings', among which we would mention partic- ularly the Tennessean, the Banner, and the Democrat of RESOLUTION OP THANKS 363 Nashville and the News-Scimitar of Memphis; and if we may mention two individuals with especial gratitude for the success of this meeting, we would name Governor Ben W. Hooper and Mr. J. E. McCulloch. In acknowledging benefits received the Congress trusts that it has also contributed something to the stimulation of the spirit of Social Service among the people of this city. Respectfully submitted, A. J. McKelway, Chairman. RESOLUTION OF THANKS ADOPTED BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Resolved, That the Executive Committee acknowledges with profound gratitude the generous aid which Mrs. E. W. Cole, of NashviUe, has rendered the Southern Sociologi- cal Congress by providing at the beginning of the move- ment a solid financial basis for its work. By her benefac- tion and the inspiration of her example and personal in- fluence, Mrs. Cole has made the whole South and nation debtor to her, and it is with great pleasure that we recog- nize her as the Founder of the Congress. Ben W. Hooper, Chairman. J. E. McCULLOCH, Secretary. 364 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH MEMBERSHIP LIST. LIFE MEMBERS. Cole, Mrs. E. W. SUSTAINING MEMBERS. Baxter, Lewis T. Bennie, Geo. E. Blanton, J. D. Brister, J. W. Carr, Julian S. Cole, W. R. Cumberland Tel. & Tel. DeWitt, John H. Eastman, Chas. H. Eleazer, Robt. B. Gray-Dudley Hardware Hume, Leland Keyes, J. J. Kilvington, W. C. Locke, C. A. Maddin, P. D. McKay Bros. & Daugherty Nashville Industrial Bureau Ogden, Robert C. Palmer, James Co. Phillips & Buttorff Pitts, John A. Ransom, John B. & Co. Scott, J. W. Co. Sharp, Robert Shook, A. M. Thruston, G. P. Tirrell, W. O. Washburn, Frank S. ACTIVE MEMBERS. Burt, Miss Mamie Bowie, Sydner J. Carnley, J. A. Clay, Miss Ida V. Crumpton, Wm. C. Davidson, Jas. L. Dinsmore, Wm. W. Doster, Jas. J. Evans, F. W. Fonde, Miss Elizabeth Gamble, Carrey Gasque, G. W. Glennon, Jas. K. Glennon, Mrs. Jas. K. Green, Lemuel Bailey Grubb, W. I. Harris, Scale House, Miss Jessie M. Hunter, Miss Alice Jones, Miss Lulie Kaul, John L. Kirkpatrick, Mrs. S. Knowler, Morris MacBrein, Miss Julia F. Martin, W. E. McNeill, H. H. Miller, E. E. Moody, Frank S. Mooney, W. D. Murdock, Mrs. W. L. Murphy, Samuel D. Gates, W. H. Parke, T. D. Rumple, Miss Mary Samford, Wm. H. Scharff, Miss Maurice R. Searcy, J. T. Searight, Mrs. M. W. MEMBERSHIP LIST 365 Sibley, Jas. L. Slaton, S. T. Snedecor, J. G. Snyder, J. Ross Sparker, Miss Annie Laura Steele, O. L. Tappey, Francis Taylor, Miss Fannie Thomas, William Holcomb Tutwiler, Miss Julia S. Walker, Alfred A. Walker, Miss Grace T. Ward, Lyman Waterman, Mrs. J. B. Weakley, D. M. Weisel, Mrs. Annie K. Wood, Mrs. W. N. Wyker, Mrs. John D. ARKANSAS. Auerback, M. A. Barrett, Frank Brough, C. H. Conger, J. W. Few, B. A. Frauenthal, Mrs. Joseph Greene, J. L. Hutchinson, Forney Library Henderson-Brown College Markwell, Mrs. Lula A. Miller, A. C. Mitchell, Miss Frances Pemberton, Mrs. W. H. RoUston, Miss L. G. Simmons, G. A. Thornburgh, Geo. T. Whipple, Durand Elliott, Miss M. M. CALIFORNIA. Howell, Robert P. CONNECTICUT. Jennings, Chas. E. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Baldwin, Wm. H. Bixby, W. H. Buckingham, Richard Thomas Dinwiddie, Edwin C. Director of U. S. Census Mack, Julian W. McKelway, A. J. Neill, Chas. P. Pellew, Henry E. Rudolph, Cuno H. Wilbur, Cressy L. Wood. Charles Wood, Clarence FLORIDA. Anthony, A. P. Aultman, Mrs. Mary E. Bell, Mrs. A. H. Bernard, L. L. Blackburn, C. Fred Chamberlain, Mrs. Ella C. Childress, Mrs. E. R. Coffin, Mrs. J. P. Cottrell, Mrs. Minnye C. Davis, Miss Elizabeth R. Fagg, Marcus C. Farr, Jas. M. Florida State Board of Health Gwynne, W. F. 866 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH Gwynne, Mrs. Wm. F. Hilderbran, A. M. Hobson, W. A. Holm, Mrs. A. H. Jackson, Kate V. Jennings, Frank E. Leak, Mrs. M. E. Library John B. Stetson University Mahon, W. L. C. Manning, V. R. McRae, W. A. McQuarrie, C. K. Melson, Miss Kittie L. Nelson, Edwin Newell, Chas. H. Shutts, Frank B. Small, Mrs. Braxton Waldo, Edwin Wilson, J. Edgar Bernhardt, Louis J. Bishop, E. E. Blalock, Mrs. J. T. Branson, E. C. Campbell, D. Moses Chappell, Mayor L. H. Dargan, E. C. Dodge, Mrs. A. G. P. Dudley, Frank J. Duval, Geo. W. Gates, C. L. Gilbert, Jas. J. Greene, Mrs. Joel G. Hendrix, W. R. Hodgson, Mrs. F. G. Hodgson, Harry Jackson, Crawford Julian, Mrs. Tessie King, Mrs. J. S. Laing, Margaret Ledbetter, C. M. Logan, Jos. C. Lovejoy, W. P. Lowe, Miss Rosa G. McCord, Robert B. Newell, Miss Mary H. Phillips, Geo. B. Raoul, Eleanore Ray, Miss Bessie Stennis, Miss Mary A. Stewart, Malcolm M. Stilwell, Laura M. Thurston, Mary Wharton Troutman, Mrs. M. L. Ware, Edward T. Weltner, Philip White, John E. White, Mrs. Laura M. White, W. Woods Whitney, G. Sherwood Wilmer, C. B. Woods, Miss Mary M. Breckenridge, Miss S. P. Coffin, J. P. Crook, Miss W. May Lyon, F. Emery ILLINOIS. Religious Education Association Reynolds, Mrs. Mary C. Taylor, Graham Wingle, Benjamin Methodist Federation of Social Service INDIANA. Johnson, Alexander IOWA. Batten, Samuel Z. MEMBERSHIP LIST 367 KENTUCKY. Allen, Mrs. Bessie L. Anderson, Harriett E. Bain, Miss Cora M. Beauchamp, Mrs. Frances E. Belknap, Mrs. Morris B. Bennett, Miss Belle H. Betcher, Newton Binkley, R. W. Bomar, E. E. Burton, George Lee Courtright, Mrs. N. A. Dix, P. C. Fisher, C. C. Flexner, Bernard Frost, Wm. G. Gernert, Fred Jackson, Miss Chloe Jones, J. W. Joplin, Geo. A. Landis, Edward Bryant Leathers, John H. Lehmann, Mrs. C. A. Letcher, Jas. H. Library of Georgetown College Little, John Barr, D. C. Beauchamp, Chas. O. Campbell, John C. Cottingham, C. Dillard, James Hardy Cowling, Oscar Gordon, Miss Jean M. Hart, W. O. Huckaby, G. C. Martindale, C. O'N. Louisville Free Library Lucas, Miss Celeste McNair, W. I. Moore, Paul M. Morgan, Jas. T. Palmer, N. A. Parrish, C. H. Patterson, John Pettit, Katherine Powell, Lewis Price, Jas. F. Proctor, B. F. Shaver, Elizabeth Shawler, W. A. Shive, B. M. Smith, Virgil P. Spencer, J. M. Strull, Charles Stuckey, J. A. Taylor, John X. Torsch, E. A. R. Troxler, John A. Watts, T. W. Whaley, Miss Nell Yewell, Morgan LOUISIANA. Morris, Miss Agnes Newell, Miss Roberta New Orleans Public Library Ragland, Miss Margaret Scroggs, Wm. O. Smith, S. A. Shuttleworth, Mrs. Frances Sutton, John L. Vaughn, Robert W. Apple, J. H. Biggs, Robert Bonaparte, Charles J. Burdick, Wm. Cochran, W. F. Fulton, John S. MAINE. Hersom, Jane L. MARYLAND. Garrett, Robert C. Glenn, Wm. L. Haslup, Mrs. Mary R. Jauney, Edward Jonathan, Taylor Kirk, Henry C. 368 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH McLane, Miss Kate M. Pyles, John B. Riggs, Lauranson Steele, H. Wirt Stein, Mrs. Simon Stevens, Eugene V. Taylor, J. K. Upham, A. E. MASSACHUSETTS. Brayton, Mrs. Hezekiah A. Newell, Henry C. Curtis, Henry S. MICHIGAN. Hudson, J. L. MISSISSIPPI. Adams, John J. Bratton, Theodore D. Galium, A. M. Carter, J. R. Eichelberger, G. W. Fox, J. H. Green, John L. Hardy, Mrs. Ada V. May Hedleston, W. D. Harrington, John C. Kells, Mrs. Harriett B. Lawrence, J. Benj. Lewis, J. T, Library of Agricultural College Long, W. Fred Lowrey, V. B. Lowrey, W. T. McCallum, A. Sidebottom, A. L. Thomas, J. M. Wainright, T. L. Walmsley, J. E. Watkins, A. F. Williams, W. M. MISSOURI. Baldwin, Roger N. Batkin, Mrs. Mary M. Brown, Darius A. Brown, Mrs. Jennie E. Campbell, Mrs. Alice P. Chubb, Percival Cross, W. T. Eichelberger, G. W. Ellwood, Chas. A. Fairbanks, J. Graville, J. Silas Frederihagen, E. A. Freytag, Miss Mabel C. Halbert, L. A. Hay, Miss Josephine Holland, Mrs. Virginia Howell, Miss Mabel K. Hubbard, C. M. Ittleson, Henry January, Mrs. N. C. Kelsey, Fred W. Kuhlman, John W. Leander, Leo Library of St. Louis, Mo. Library University of Missouri Lynch, J. Hal Nugent, Mrs. J. G. Perry, Miss Mary E. Robinson, Mrs. Mary Springer, Mrs. C. R. Squires, R. E. Stout, Henry E. St. Louis Mercantile Library Ass'n. Thomas, W. W. Waterman, J. A. Werner, Percy Wilson, J. D. Young, Allyn A. MEMBERSHIP LIST 369 NEW HAMPSHIRE. Priest, Mrs. Electa M. NEW MEXICO. Gray, Pres. E. McQueen. NEW YORK. Abbott, Lawrence F. Behar, N. Bureau of Industries and Immigra- tion Campbell, John C. Crouch, F. M. Dinwiddie, Miss Emily Wayland Frankel, Lee K. Glenn, John M. Hart, Hastings H. Haven, W. I. Hicks, H. W. Ihlder, John Lattimore, Miss Florence L. Lovejoy, Owen R. Macfarland, Chas. S. Ober, C. K. Ogden, Robert C. Peabody, George Foster Ryder, C. J. Stelzle, Charles Strong, Josiah NORTH CAROLINA. Arendell, F. B. Atkinson, R. E. Averitt, K. G. Baldwin, J. A. Booth, S. D. Brown, R. L. Denson, Miss Daisy Dudley, Jas. B. Fritz, R. L. Goold, Edgar H. Holman, Miss Lydia Jefferson Standard Life Ins. Co. Kesler, M. L. Laughinhouse, Chas. O. I-ay, George W. Library Univ. of North Carolina Ludlow, J. L. March, Miss Elizabeth Minor, Chas. L. Myers, L. B. Parrott, James M. Perry, Miss Mattie E. Poe, Clarence Poteat, William Louis Rankin, W. S. Ray, John E. Rodman, Mrs. J. L. Rogers, B. Winston Sentelle, R. E. Setzer, A. H. Schlichter, Norman C. Spilman, B. W. Summers, A. W. Townsend, F. L. Wyche, Miss M. L. OKLAHOMA. Adams, F. M. Arnold, Edmond Barnard, Miss Kate Brown, Mrs. G. A. Caldwell, J. H. Connell, J. H. Dearing, W. S. Gill, Joseph A. 370 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Gordon, G. I. Graham, W. T. Hardy, Walter Hester, Mrs. G. B. Hinshaw, Elihu B. Huson, H. King, C. W. Loofbourrow, R. H. Malone, A. L. Carlisle, Howard B. Carlisle, Mark L. Cooley, Rossa B. Dabbs, Mrs. E. W. Durant, Charlton Gadsden, Deaconess Harms, J. H. House, Grace Bigelow Furman University Library Jamison, A. T. King, R. Hayne Lee, Charles McGeorge, W. R. Moody, Calvin Rayburn, James Spain, W. M. Templeton, Mrs. John L. Thompson, G. W. Wickham, Noah B. Wilson, W. M. SOUTH CAROLINA. McClintock, Miss E. McCullough, J. A. Morse, Josiah Otis, James C. Rowe, W. J. Steele, Stella E. Stevens, John Tharin, Miss Claudia G. Todd, J. Young Valentine, B. W. Watkins, Asa D. Wilbur, Walter B. TENNESSEE. Adamson, Jno. C. Alexander, B. T. Allen, W. Harwell Armstrong, J. V. Athey, Mrs. C. N. Arnstein, Mrs. Max B. Bachman, J. W. Bang, Mrs. M. P. Barnwell, Mrs. B. W. Baskerville, J. T. Beard, Mrs. W. D. Bell, Claude J. Bell, Mrs. Bennett D. Birdwell, Miss Pearl Blackmore, J. W. Blake, D. B. Bollman, C. P. Boothe, E. B. Boswell, Ira M. Brading, J. E. Brandon, A. J. Brown, Lucius P. Brown, W. C. Buckner, M. G. Bullard, Mrs. Eugene Burch, Robt. L. Burnett, George J. Bushnell, Miss Lorilla E. Buttram, W. H. Cage, Jesse Cain, Miss Mamie E. Caraway, Nanie B. Carre, H. B. Cheek, C. T. Chamberlain, H. S. Cherry, D. H. Clark, G. F. Clark, Harry Clark, T. B. Clarke, Jas. E. Clement, A. E. Clements, Mrs. Margaret B. Cockrill, M. S. Cohn, Sol MEMBERSHIP LIST 371 TENNESSEE. Coile, S. A. Collier, Wm. C. Collins, Miss Elizabeth Cossitt Library, Memphis Condie, C. C. Cooke, A. B. Cooper, Montgomery Cornelius, B. F. Craig, E. E. Cranor, W. O. Crawford, J. M. Crockett, S. S. Crockett, Mrs. S. S. Crosthwait, George Crowder, G. A. Crutcher, Mrs. Eugene Cullom & Ghertner Cunniggim, J. L. Danthit, H. B. Darden, Mrs. Grace Reaney Davis, Miss Harriett Davis, J. F. Davis, W. B. Diehl, Chas. E. Detwiler, G. H. Dinvifiddie, William Douglas, A. E. Dozier, Mrs. K. B. Dresser, Mrs. Prudence S. DuBose, Miss S. P. Dudley, Houston Dumas, Mrs. Mattie Dutton, Miss Emily H. Eakin, Mrs. John Hill Early, J. H. Eastman, Mrs. Chas. H. Eaton, Miss Grace M. Enochs, S. B. Ervvrin, E. E. Eskind & Greenspan Eaton, Miss Grace M. Everette, Mrs. Frank Ewing, Mrs. Felix G. Ewing, Mrs. W. G. Ezzell, James B. Fahey, Chas. P. Fletcher, Robert S., Jr. Former, T. H. Foster, A. P. Foster, Edgar M. Foster, Wilbur F. Frank, Joseph Frick, John Gates, G. A. Gilbert, Mrs. Mamie Kerr Gillespie, W. C. Gill, Miss Laura Drake Gray, Chas. O. Gray, John M. Green, Mrs. Minnie Hall, Wm. B. Hamilton, W. R. Hard, W. M. Hardison, R. C. Hardy, Mrs. Frederick Haskin, Miss Estelle Harwell, J. R. Hawkins, G. A. Haynes, George E. Head, Miss Mabel Hemphill, J. K. Henderson, Mrs. Ben R. Hill, jMiss Jane Webster Hill, Miss Martha Hinds, J. I. D. Hollins, R. L. Hollomon, Mrs. W. L. Holman, Miss Silena Moore Hook, R, Jr. Hooper, Gov. Ben W. Howlett, K. S. Hubbard, G. W. Hubbell, Geo. A. Huffaker, Miss Ida Hunter, J. W., Jr. Jackson, Miss Martha Sms^h Jelks, John L. Johnson, J. W. Jones, Mrs. L. H. Jones, Mrs. K. P. Jonte, N. S. Joyner, C. H. Kayhoe, J. F. F. Kennedy, Francis R. 372 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH TENNESSEE. Kennedy, George Keyes, J. J. Kierolf, S. E. Kilvington, W. C. King, Thomas B. Kirkland, James H. Knows, William Kornman, Sawyer & Co. Kranz, James P. Krauss, Wm. Kumler, John A. Landrith, Ira Levy, Sam & Co. Lewinthal, I. Locke, A. S. Logan, M. P. Loveman, Mrs. A. Loventhal, Lee J. Lowman, J. W. Lyle, Herbert S. Lyons, J. L. Maloney, Frank Manning, J. W., Sr. Maryville College Library Mason, Chas. Massey, F. M. MacDonell, Mrs. R. W. McCallie, Mrs. T. H. McCormack, Mrs. J. M. McCulloch, J. E. McGranahan, R. W. McNair, N. E. McRae, W. V. McSwain, L A. McWhirter, F. P. McWhorter-Hutton Co. Meadows, Jos. T. Metcalf, Wilmot V. Miller, J. H. Mills, Reuben M. Mitchell, Chas. Mitchell, Geo. Montague, Mrs. D. P. Morgan, Henry W. Morrison, W. J. Moses, Thos. L. Neal, Mrs. E. M. Neely, J. J. Nelson, Mrs. Cora Bristol. Nelson, H. O. Newman, Mrs. Willie Betty. Niles, S. G. Nye, H. T. O'Bryan Bros. Ogden, E. W. Overall, Hawes & Co. Parker, F. S. Parlett, Albert Patten, John A. Payne, Bruce R. Peace, T. W. Peter, Joseph H. Pinson, W. W. Provine, W. A. Price, H. T. Pryor, James J. Purvis, Walter M. Quillian, Wm. F. Race, John H. Raoul, Gaston C. Ransom, John J. Reeves, J. S. & Co. Reynolds, A. D. Rich, Stanley L. Richmond, W. D. Riddle, W. S. & Co. Ricks, Wm. B. Robertson, Mrs. G. H. Rochelle, W. L. Rogan, A. B. Rolston, E. H. Rose, C. E. Ross, Mrs. F. H. E. Rule, Miss Cora Rutherford, R. T. Samfield, M. Sanders, Newell Savage, G. C. Schamberger, W. G. Scruggs, Mrs. Thos. M. MEMBERSHIP LIST 373 TENNESSEE. Scales, D. C. Sears, W. H. Seavy, H. P. Seymour, Sam H. Shannon, E. S. Sheib, S. H. Sibley, Josiah Sly, Miss Elva L. Smiser, M. W. Smith, E. M. Smith, L. F. Smith, S. L. Smith, Herbert B. Smith, Mrs. R. M. Kirby- Solinsky, Harris Spellings, W. W. Stahlman, E. B. Steele, Mrs. Almira S. Stinson, J. G. Sullins, Mrs. W. B. Thompson, Miss Mary Allen Thompson, W. E. Tillman, G. N. Trawick, Mrs. Arch Trawick, A. M. Tucker, R. O. Vance, James I. Verran, W. L. Ware, C. S. Watson, Allen Weakley, Mrs. Robert F. Weatherford, W. D. Weatherly, Armistead, McKinney Co. Webster, W. H. Wedding, R. B. West, Mrs. Benjamin West, Olin Wheeler, W. E. White, Gordon Whitefield, Harvey Wiermann, Miss Alvena Wigginton, T. A. Wills, A. W. Williams, Miss Carolina Williams, H. F. Williams, W. T. Wilson, J. Edgar Wilson, T. M. Wilverman, Miss Alvena E. Windiate, Thos. D. Winton, G. B. Wiseman, Cora Ida Witherspoon, J. A. Wood, Gordon Wood, Mrs. W. M. Barton, A. J. Baylor University Library Boaz, H. A. Bruton, W. T. Garden, G. A. Carnegie Public Library, Ft. Cook, T. S. Curtis, Mrs. Nannie W. Dallas Public Library Decherd, H. B. Doyle, Winfred Durham, Miss Mary Ora Ellis, A. Caswell Finty, Tom, Jr. Frye, E. J. TEXAS. Glenn, W. M. Hogg, Will C. Horner, W. W. Houston Lyceum and Carnegie Library Worth Jarvis, Dan Jenkins, Chas. H. Kennard, C. D. Key, Mrs. L. A. Kidd Kirby, R. H. Mullin, W. T. Munger, I. E. Neely, Mrs. M. H. Patten, Frank C. Pennybacker, Mrs. P. V. 374 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH Potts, C. S. Powell, Ben H. Proctor, F. C. Sandefer, J. D. Smith, J. Frank Smith, R. S. Sutton, Wm. S. Townsend, E. G. Webb, A. G. Wilkinson, J. W. Wilson, W. T. Wood, Mrs. J. W. Woods, John W. Ackley, S. A. Agnew, Miss Ella G. Anderson, Miss Kathleen Barrett, Mrs. Kate Waller Bidgood, Lee Bosher, Robert S. Bryan, John Stewart Buchanan, James Burruss, Julian A. Cocke, Miss Matty L. Davis, Miss Nannie C. Drewry, Wm. F. Eggleston, J. D. Flannagan, Roy K. Frissell, Hollis Burke Grandy, Chas. R. I'Anson, Vernon Jamison, Mrs. Samuel W. Library of Va. Union University Mastin, J. T. Maybre, Wm. J. MacDonald, Miss R. M. Minor, Mrs. E. C. Phillips, A. L. Royster, L. T. Scherer, L. L. Shippen, Mrs. E. G. Terrell, Miss A. C. Virginia State Library Wertenbaker, C. P. Williams, Ennion G. Wrenek, W. H. Conley, W. G. Hetzel, John J. McKinney, Miss Nola WEST VIRGINIA. Morris, H. Stayman, J. W. WISCONSIN. Steadwell, B. S. AFRICA. Evans, Maurice L. CANADA. Clark, W. L. BIBLIOGRAPHY ON DEPARTMENTS. 375 BIBLIOGRAPHY ON DEPARTMENTS. Any book in this bibliography, or any other book on Social Questions, may be secured by ordering of the General Secretary, 323 Sixth Avenue, North, Nashville, Tenn. PUBLIC HEALTH. Author and Publication. Price. Allen, W. H.— Civics and Health (1909) $ i 50 Knopf, S. A. — Tuberculosis, a Preventable and Curable Disease (1909) 2 00 Baskerville, C— Municipal Chemistry (1911) S 00 Godfrey, H.— Health of the City (1910) I 25 Savage, W. G.— Milk and Public Health (1912) 3 25 Sykes, J. F. J. — Public Health Problems (1899) i 50 Hutchinson, W. — Preventable Diseases (1909) i So Brewer, I. W. — Rural Hygiene (1909) i 25 Sedgwick, W. T. — Principles of Sanitary Science (1902) 3 00 Addams, Jane — A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912) ... i 00 Fisher, I. — National Vitality (1910) 15 (Order from Supt. Pub. Documents, Washington, D. C.) Chapin, C. V. — Sources and Methods of Infection (1910) 3 00 Huber, J. B. — Consumption and Civilization (1906) 3 00 Kellicott, W. E. — Social Direction of Human Evolution (1911) . . i 50 COURTS AND PRISONS. Wines, F. H. — Punishment and Reformation (1910) i 75 Ellis, H. — The Criminal (1910) I SO Henderson, C. R. — The Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes (1901) i 50 Ferri, E. — Criminal Sociology (1910) 5 co Boies, H. M. — The Science of Penology (1901) 3 50 Parmalee, M. — Anthropolgy and Sociology in Relation to Criminal Procedure (1908) i 25 Lombroso, C. — Criminal Man (1911) 2 00 Morrison, W. D. — Crime and Its Causes (1909) i oo CHILD WELFARE. Folks, H. — Care of Destitute, Neglected and Delinquent Children (1902) I CO Reader, R. R. — How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn (1910) I 25 Newman, Geo. — Infant Mortality 2 50 Harte, H. H. — Preventive Treatment of Neglected Children (1910) 2 50 Gulick and Ayres — Medical Inspection of School Children (1908) . . i 00 376 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Henderson, C. R. — Introduction to Study of Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes (iQOi) i SO Mangold, George B.— Child Problems (1910) 1 25 Spargo, John — The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906) 60 Murphy, E. G. — The Present South (1905) 60 Addams, Jane — The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) . . 60 Saleeby, C. W. — Parenthood and Race Culture (1912) 50 Coe, G. A. — Education in Religion and Morals (1904) i 35 Kelley, Florence — Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation (1905) . i 25 Travis, T.— The Young Malefactor (1908) i So NEGRO PROBLEMS. American Academy of Political and Social Science — Industrial Con- dition of the Negro in the North (paper) (1906) 50 Johnston, H. H. — Negro in the New World (igio) 6 00 Washington, B. T. — Up From Slavery (1901) 60 Washington, B. T. — My Larger Education (1911) I SO Page, T. N. — The Negro: The Southerner's Problem (1904) ... i 25 Merriam, G. S. — The Negro and the Nation (1906) i 75 Smith, W. B.— The Color Line (190s) 1 50 Stone, A. H. — Studies in the American Race Problem (1908) ... 2 00 Baker, R. S. — Follovvfing the Color Line (1908) 2 00 Weatherford, W. D. — Negro Life in the South (1910) 75 Commons, John R. — Races and Immigrants in America I SO Saleeby, C. W. — Parenthood and Race Culture (1912) ...... so ORGANIZED CHARITIES. Warner, A. G. — American Charities (1908) 2 00 Conyngton, M. — How to Help (1909) I SO Conyngton, M, — Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects (1910) I 50 Devine, E. T. — The Practice of Charity (1903) 65 Devine, E. T. — Misery and Its Causes (1909) 1 2S Richmond, Mary — Friendly Visiting Among the Poor (1901) ... I 00 Henderson, C. R. — The Care of the Dependent, Defective and De- linquent Classes (1901) i 50 Devine, E. T. — Principles of Relief (1904) 2 00 Richmond, Mary — Good Neighbor in the Modern City (1907) ... 60 Hunter, R. — Poverty (1905) 60 MacLean, F. H. — Formation of Charity Organizations in Smaller Cities Char. Pub. Com. THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL SERVICE. Rauschenbusch, W. — Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) ... 60 Batten, S. Z. — The Social Task of Christianity (1911) I 25 BIBLIOGRAPHY ON DEPARTMENTS 377 Ward, H. R— The Social Creed of the Churches (1911) i 00 Gladden, W. — The Church and Modern Life (1908) i 25 Holmes, J. H. — The Revolutionary Function of the Church (1912) . i 25 O'Shea, M. V. — Social Development and Education (1909) 2 00 Scott, C. A. — Social Education (1908) i 25 Hall, T. C. — Social Solutions (1910) i So Peabody, F. G. — ^Jesus Christ and the Social Question (1900) ... 60 McCuUoch, J. E. — The Open Church for the Unchurched (1905) . . i 00 Patten, S. N. — Social Basis of Religion (1911) i 25 MacFarland, C. S. — Christian Ministry and the Social Order (1909) i 25 Stelzle, Charles — The Social Application of Religion (1908) ... i 00 Busby, K. — Home Life in America (1910) 2 00 Matthews, S. — The Social Teaching of Jesus (1897) 60 Earp, E. L. — The Social Engineer (1911) i 50 Ellwood, C. A. — Sociology and Modern Social Problems (1910) ... i 00 Wright, C. D. — Practical Sociology (1909) 2 co Ross, E. A. — Social Psychology (1908) i 50 Woods, R. A. — Handbook of Social Settlements (igii) i 50 Bliss, W. D. P. — The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1908) . 7 50 Batten, S. Z. — The Christian State (1909) i 50 Crafts — March of Christ Down the Centuries (1902) 25 Warner, H. S. — Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem (1909) . . I 00 Crafts, W. F. — Practical Christian Sociology (1Q07) i 50 378 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH INDEX OF SPEAKERS, WRITERS AND OFFICERS. Page. Allen, Wm. T 341 Auerback, M. A 359 Baker, James M Baldwin, Roger N 359 Barnard, Miss Kate 103, 358, 359 Barr, D. C 360 Barton, A. J 361 Belknap, Mrs. Morris 3S9 Bennett, Miss Belle H 361 Bernard, Prof. L. L 358 Bernhardt, Louis J 129 Bicknell, Plon. E. P 161 Branson, Prof. E. C 361 Brockway, Z. R 1 14 Brorein, W. B 360 Brough, Prof. C. H 3S8 Browne, Sir Thomas 141 Buchanan, James 360 Burdette, Bob 320 Byrd, Hiram 360 Cole, Mrs. E. W 8, 3S8, 363 Cole, W. R 358, 359 Cope, Dr. Henry F 249 Cotrell, Capt. Ben 360 Crafts, Dr. W. F 311 Crockett, Mrs. S. S 3S8, 360 Cuninggira, Prof. J. L 360 Davenport, Dr. Charles B 165 Denson, Miss Daisy 359 Detwiler, Dr. G. H 62, 358, 361 Devine, Dr. Edward T 322 DeWitt, John H 17, 358, 359, 360 Diehl, Rev. Charles E 361 Dillard, Dr. J. H 3S9 Dowling, Dr. Oscar 212, 360 Drewry, Dr. W. F 153, 360 Dyer, Prof. G. W 25, 87, 358, 361 Dyer, Dr. Isadore 163 Eagan, John J 360 Farley, John 358 Ehrenreich, Rabbi 360 Ellwood, Dr. Charles A 229, 359 Fagg, Marcus C 360 INDEX OF SPEAKERS, WRITERS AND OFFICERS 379 Fahey, C. P 360 Ferris, Dr. A. W 155 Finty, Tom, Jr , gs, 359 Fisher, Prof. Irving 61 Flexner, Bernard 37, 359 Foster, A. P 358 Frank, Joseph 358 Frankel, Lee K 187 Frissell, Dr. H. B " . . . . 361 Gates, Dr. George A 361 Glasscock, Gov. W. E 35g Glenn, John M 267 Goddard, Dr 55, 160 Gordon, Miss Jean M. 359, 360 Gulick, Dr. Luther E 259 Halbert, L. A 360 Hammond, Dr. J. D 361 Harris, Dr. Seale 360 Hart, Hastings H 51 Henderson, Prof. Charles R 120 Hendrix, Rev. W. R 361 Hobson, Hon. Richmond P 312, 360 Holderness, M. E 358 Holman, Mrs. Silena Moore 360 Hooper, Gov. Ben W 7, 8, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 92, 311, 358, 363 Howell, Miss Mabel K 361 Hubbard, C. M 360 Hubbard, Dr. George W 361 Huckaby, G. H 361 Hulley, Dr. Lincoln 359 Huson, H 359 Hutchinson, Dr. Woods ^ 166 Jacobs, Miss Theodora 360 Jamison, A. T 360 Johnson, Alexander 168 Johnson, Dr. Samuel 104 Johnstone, Dr , 55, 162 Kant, Immanuel 222 Kirkland, Chancellor J. H 360 Knipp, Miss Gertrude 59 Kranz, J. P 359, 360 Lambuth, Bishop W. R 361 Landrith, Dr. Ira 17, 18, 361 Lathrop, Miss Julia C 349, 360 Lea, Senator Luke 312 Leathers, Dr. W. S 360 Lewis, Charlton 118 Little, Rev. John 361 380 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Logan, Joseph C 359, 360 Logan, Rev. Mercer P 358 Lovejoy, Owen R 67 Lowe, Miss Rose G 359, 360 Ludlow, Col., J. L 191 360 McClintock, Miss E 359 McCormick, Mrs. J. M 360 McCuUoch, J. E 15, 17, 358, 363 McCullough, Judge J. A 359, 360 McDonald, Dr. J. A 191, 193 McElwreath, Walter 360 McGrath, W. M 360 McKelway, Dr. A. J 358, 359, 360, 363 Macfarland, Dr. Charles S 292 Mack, Judge Julian W 360 Magruder, J. W 359 Mastin, Dr. J. T 44, 159, 359 Minor, Dr. Charles L 172 Mitchell, Dr. S. C 361 Molineaux, Roland B 102 Morris, Miss Agnes 359 Munford, Mrs. Beverly B 360 Murdock, Mrs. W. L 358, 360 Murphy, Edgar Gardner 67 Myers, L. B 360 Naegeli, Dr 178 Nelson, Mrs. Cora Bristol 40 Newton, R. J 360 Gates, Dr. W. H 104 Osier, Dr. William 147 Patten, John A 361 Poe, Clarence 3S9 Potts, Prof. C. S 113, 359, 360 Powell, Dr. F. M 42 Rankin, Dr. W. S 361 Reynolds, Prof. P. B 359 Rice, Dr. John A 359, 361 Richmond, Miss Mary E 342 Rose, Dr. Wickliffe 358 Routzahn, E. G 360 Samford, Hon. W. H 124 Sample, William H 361 Sayler, Miss Flora 360 Searcy, Dr. James T 153, 156 Sehon, George L 360 Sequin, Dr 40, 41 Smith, Fred B 320 INDEX OP SPEAKERS, WRITERS AND OFFICERS 381 Snedecor, Rev. J. G 361 Spencer, Herbert 141 Steele, H. Wirt 359 Stiles, Maj. C. W 360 Stone, Alfred Holt 359, 361 Stovall, A. T 359 Strain, J. D 358 Taylor, George C 17 Taylor, Dr. Graham 135, 340 Thirkield, Bishop W. P 361 Thomas, W. H 203, 359, 360 Ufford, Walter G 359 Vance, Dr. James 1 361 Waldron, Rev. E. A 360 Washingrton, Dr. Booker T 224 Weakley, L. M 360 Weatherf ord. Dr. W. D 220, 36^ Weltner, Phillip 106, 360 Wertenbaker, Surgeon C. P 216, 360 Williams, Dr. Ennion G 148, 3S9, 360 Willows, Maurice 360 Wilmer, Rev. C. B 361 White, Dr. J. E 361 White, W. Woods 240, 359 382 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH INDEX OF SUBJECTS. A. Page. Abolishment of Lease System 93 Address of Welcome i8 Administration of Laws 124 After Prison, What? IOI-134 Alabama Law for Prison Inspection ,. . 104 Alabama's Prison System 96 Alcoholism as Cause of Insanity and Feeble-Mindedness 163 American Bar Association 79 Anglo-Saxon Blood 30, 62, 66 Anti-Tuberculosis Leagues for Negroes 216 Arkansas State Forms for Prisoners, The 96 Atlanta Loan & Savings Company 242 B. Bar Association, American 79 Business Versus Child Labor 69 C. Call of Social Worker 322 Call, The, by Gov. Hooper 13 Camp Fire Girls of America 259 Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children 40 Cellular and Individual Diseases 141 Central Howard Association 123 Challenge of the Congress, The IS Child Labor Versus Business Interest 69 Child Labor in South, Extent of TZ Child Labor 316 Child Labor, The Poor Widow Argument 75 Child Labor and Compulsory Education 67 Child and the Court, The 37 Children, the Nation's Best Asset 44 Christian Social Service 288 Church and Modern Industry 292 Church and Cooperation 271 Church and the Divorce Evil, The 238 Church and Social Service 275 Civil War Destroyed Values 26 Classification of Diseases 141 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 383 Compulsory School Attendance 70 Conference for Education in the. South 19 Constructive Social Service 280 Cooperation for Negro Betterment 21 Cooperation and Coordination 267 Court of Rehabilitation 102 Crime Generally 205 D. Degenerates, The Care of 168 Delinquent Children, Institution for 54, 57 Dependency, Causes of 45 Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases in the Social Organism 146 Discovery of Causes of Social Ills 28 Diseases of the Social Organism • 141 Disfranchisement of Ignorance 31S Divorce, Statistics of 230 Divorce Problem, The 229 Drunkenness 207 E. Education and Social Service 249 Ethics and Industry 29 Existing Codes Based on Wrong Principles 114 Experience of Texas in Prison Work 94 Extent of Feeble-Mindedness in the Nation 169 F. Feeble-Mindedness, Extent of 42 Feeble-Minded, Institutions For 42, S3 Feeble-Minded, Procreation Prohibited 49 G. Georgia and the Lease System 96 Government, Purpose of 99 Growth of Interest in Feeble-Minded 40 H. Hermitage, The 3i Hookworm Argument for Child Labor ^^ 384 THE CALL OF THE NEW SOUTH Illiteracy 70, 2o8 Imprisonment for Reforming the Criminal 91 Imprisonment for Protection of Society 88 Imprisonment for Punishment, Origin of 87 Indeterminate Sentence and the Probation System 113 Indeterminate Sentence, Principle of 117 Indeterminate Sentence, Objection to 118 Indeterminate Sentence, Benefits of 119 Inequalities of Administration of Laws 124 Infant Mortality 59 Insanity, Growth of ISS Insanity, Growth of in Virginia 156 Institutions and Organizations Entitled to Membership 14 Insurance Nursing 187 J. Jail of Alabama 104 Jails Needing Attention loi Juvenile Courts Freed from Criminal Law 38 Juvenile Courts, Right of Appeal from 38 K. Kentucky Prison System 97 Kingdom of God 282, 284 L. Lawyers With Social Training 37 Leadership in Social Service 311 Lease System Abolished in Five States 95 Lease System in Florida 95 Lease System, Origin of 94 Logan and Municipal Disease 142 Louisiana and the Lease System 95 Lynching 315 Lynching Due to Bad Philosophy 89 M. Manual Work for the Dependent 49 Manufacturing in the South 25 INDEX OP SUBJECTS 385 Marriage That Binds 23 Medical Inspection in Schools 269 Mental Defectives, Extent of 154 Mental Defectives and Insane 153 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company 187 Modern Industry in the Church 292 Money Shark Business 240 Mortality, Infant 59 Mountain Whites 62, 82 Municipal and Misdemeanor Offenders 106 N. National Child Labor Committee 67, 79 National Deterioration by Neglect of Public Health 191 National Spirit , 212 Nature of Social Service 276 Nebraska State Penitentiary 135 Negro and Administration of Laws 125 Negro Betterment, Necessity of Cooperation for 21 Negro Children, Delinquent 58 Negro and Crime 203 Negroes Fairly Tried 206 Negro and the New South, The 220 Negro and Public Health, The 212 New York Times' Editorial 20 North Carolina Prison System 97 O. Object of Imprisonment 122 Obstacles to Prison Reform 99 Oklahoma Constitution Regarding Prison Labor 96 Organic and Occupational Diseases 142 Organizations to Promote Public Health 147 Origin of Lease System 94 Orphanage Versus the Home Si Orphanage, The Old Idea of SO P. Panama Canal 24 Police System in Atlanta no Poverty, A Cause of 48 Purpose of the Congress 14 386 THE CALL OP THE NEW SOUTH Purpose of Imprisonment 87, 100 Purpose of Government 99 President's Telegram, The 17 Prevention of Juvenile Dependency 45 Prevention, Need to Learn 22, 28 Prevention 278 Prison Conditions in the South 92, 131 Prison Inspection Law of Alabama 104 Prison Labor in Tennessee 97 Prisoner's Chief Need 133 Prisoners Robbed 132 Prisoner's Side, The 129 Probation as a Substitute for Imprisonment 113, 120 Problem of the City 25, 26 Progress in Child Labor Legislation 79 Prohibition in the South 321 Q. Qualifications of the Social Worker 340 R. Recovery of the South 15, 26 Reform Forces of Reform 92 Relative Value of Institutional and Placing-Out Systems 51 Relief 276 Rescue Work 28 Robbing the Prisoner 132 S. Salvation Army gi Sociology Defined 28 Social Evil, The 315 Social Program of the Congress 9 Social Ideal, The 321 Social Resources of the South 316 Solid South for a Better Nation 16, 18 Southern Commercial Congress 19 Southern Problems 25 South Carolina Prison System 97 Southern Difficulties in Social Movements 312 South's Social Problem 314 Sunshine Branch of Social Service 316 State Gaurdianship of Feeble-Minded 163 INDEX OP SUBJECTS 387 Statistics of Divorce 230 State Patriotism 317 Symptoms of Disease in the Social Organism 143 Systemic and National Diseases 142 T. Trained Workers, Need of 37, 39, 50 Training of Feeble-Minded Children 40 Tuberculosis — The Sociological Aspect of the Problem -. 172 Typical Southerner 30 Typical Southern Home 31 U. Uniform Administration 206 Uniform Child Labor Law 79 Uniform Divorce Legislation 239 V. Virginia State Colony for Epileptics 159 Virginia State Prison System 97 Virginia State Board of Charities 58 Vital Statistics, Necessity of 77 Vital Statistics, Sociological Value of 148 Vital Statistics of Child Labor 151 Vital Statistics for the Study of Defectives 151 Vital Statistics — New Legislation Demanded 152 W. White House Conference 51 Women's Clubs 337 i;.' Hi ' 'llli iip < I'll I, I i l! i I! ! ! 11 II; ■'illiiilli I!;,. {JJjijl 'i IPlli P 1 lilPi'ii! li! Ill ■ f .1' ,ji J,, ir'i 1 P PI ' I II! i' I ! I ll ilJlllllliiilllliilillliiiilllllili Plilil^^^^^ , . . li„ll|ll!lllllhillilill|iMVI'lllliiil)lllllllillIIIIIIillliili'lJiJ|llHl